White House may concede defeat

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

Although no one in the White House will speak on the record, there is talk of acknowledging the change in political wind direction and offering to withdraw some troops now.

“Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point,” the official said. “Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.”

Both Robert Gates and Stephen Hadley have cancelled travel plans to stay in Washington for meetings about Iraq with Josh Bolten and -- of course -- Karl Rove.

Cheney remains a mystery.

...No one is clinging to a stay-the-course position but ...instead aides are trying to game out what might happen if the president becomes more specific about the start and the shape of what the White House is calling a “post-surge redeployment.”

The views of many of the participants in that discussion were unclear, and the officials interviewed could not provide any insight into what Vice President Dick Cheney had been telling President Bush.

The politics are very precarious.  Hadley is described as "as deeply concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Mr. Rove."

But they also said that Mr. Rove had warned that if Mr. Bush went too far in announcing a redeployment, the result could include a further cascade of defections — and the passage of legislation that would force a withdrawal by a specific date, a step Mr. Bush has always said he would oppose.

“Everyone’s particularly worried about what happens when McCain gets back from Iraq,” one official said, a reference to the latest trip to Baghdad by Senator John McCain, who has been a stalwart supporter of the “surge” strategy. Mr. McCain’s travels, and his political troubles in the race for the Republican nomination for president, have fueled speculation that he may declare the Iraqi government incapable of the kind of political accommodations that the crackdown on violence was supposed to permit.

In other words, "high officials" speaking "off the record" are as worried that they're going to lose a political game as most of us worried we're going to lose more lives in Iraq.