Fox News reported that President Bush was "folksy, adamant and mildly profane ," as he crashed unannounced into a meeting of Republican chieftains at the White House. "His message: the policy on Iraq isn't changing. He is not backing down and no one on Capitol Hill should be confused into thinking he is letting up." Was he tipsy? The article doesn't say.

Among newspaper editors at least, the pressure is buidling to get out. According to Editor and Publisher, the Philly Inquirer ("Members of Congress need to be the grown-ups in the room"), the Detroit Free Press ("It is time to start getting America out of Iraq, to stop debating whether the glass is half empty or half full, and start to drain it"), the Sacramento Bee, the Boston Globe, and the Wichita Eagle have editorialized that it's time to wind down the war.

It's clear that despite all the pressure, Republicans have decided to give President Bush a reprieve until the fall. That's no surprise. It allows Democrats to score more points (says Harry Reid: "I admire and appreciate Senator Warner and Senator Lugar very much speaking out. I wish they would vote as well as they talk."), and it allows the antiwar movement to build its district-by-district and state-by-state campaigns to target Republicans.

So the atrocities continue. From the Haditha massacre trial:

"I told him, there's women and kids in that room," Lance Cpl. Humberto M. Mendoza said of Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum. Tatum's response was, "Well, shoot them," Mendoza said. ...

Inside, he found a bed with two women and four or five children on it. "They were scared," Mendoza said. He backed out of the room and told Tatum what he found. But Tatum told him to shoot the women and children, Mendoza testified.

"Was he joking?" asked prosecutor Lt. Col. Paul Atterbury. "He was very serious," Mendoza said.

Tatum then entered the room, Mendoza said. Mendoza heard rifle fire and later saw all of the occupants dead, he said.