Most of the press conference by the president today was his standard boiler-plate: stay the course, win the war, defeat Al Qaeda. And he seemed to almost whimsically say that he would listen to the senators politely, but that's it: "I value the advice of those senators. I appreciate their concerns about the situation in Iraq, and I am going to continue listening to them."

But then there was an extended riff on the Baker-Hamilton/ISG approach. Does it mean that he's hinting that he might, after all, opt for an ISG-style shift in policy? Your guess is as good as mine:

Well, there's a lot of discussion about a scenario in which our troop posture would be to guard the territorial integrity of the country of Iraq, to embed and train, to help the Iraqi security forces deal with violent elements in their society, as well as keep enough Special Forces there to chase down al Qaeda. As a matter of fact, that is something that I've spoken in public about, said that's a position I'd like to see us in.

However, I felt like we needed to send more troops to be able to get the situation to quiet down enough to be able to end in that position.

And in terms of my own decision making, as I mentioned earlier, I definitely need to be in consultation, and will be, with General David Petraeus, who asked for the additional troops in the first place -- troops which have been in place, fully in place for about three weeks.

And so I would ask members of Congress to give the general a chance to come back and to give us a full assessment of whether this is succeeding or not. And it's at that point in time that I will consult with members of Congress and make a decision about the way forward -- all aiming to succeed in making sure that al Qaeda and other extremists do not benefit from a decision I might have to make.