"History will decide what role the United States played," he told Al Jazeera in Arabic, based on CNN translations. "And God willing, we tried to do our best in Iraq."

"But I think there is a big possibility ... for extreme criticism and because undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the United States in Iraq," the diplomat told Al Jazeera. (Watch Fernandez on Al-Jazeera -- :19)

During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”

Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’

Bush is wrong:

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — The Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials said.

Details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilize the country.

The Connecticut press has by and large accepted the conventional wisdom that Lieberman is for Bush's war, and Lamont is against it. But that's not actually what the electorate thinks. The electorate listened to Lieberman's commercials, and at least some portion of them believe that he's not really that pro-Bush or pro-war. I mean, he used to be a Democrat, and said he'll caucus with them, right?

So in Connecticut, the three Republicans and Joe Lieberman are able to blur the line between them and the Democrats on the war, because the press doesn't know that the public doesn't know. In the rest of the country, Lieberman's trick, of using his party affiliation to hide his political affiliation, doesn't work, and so the contrast is starker.

This is a really interesting story, and it's something I hope the Connecticut press pursues. Lieberman won't explicitly admit to a change in position on Iraq, but his commercials, and the message he's putting out around the press, say that he has changed even as surrogates like George Bush and Dick Cheney quietly defend Lieberman's GOP credentials.