The public has grasped that the Bush Iraq policy has made the Middle East more dangerous for US armed forces and US national interests. This reality is widely sinking in, except to a narrowing circle of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and a compliant George W. Bush.

Not a day goes by without some surprise attack in Iraq showing the insurgency gaining, not on the run. Civil society for ordinary Iraqis is getting more dangerous, not more orderly. The enterprise of ''nation-building," an idea ridiculed in 2000 by candidate Bush, has become the disaster he warned about. It took the founders of the United States more than a decade from the failed Articles of Confederation to the 1789 Constitution. The Iraqis, far more divided and under siege, face unrealistic orders to complete their process in a few weeks.

Voters have no appetite for an indefinite occupation. The most recent CNN-USA Today Gallup poll shows Americans consider the war a mistake by a 54-44 percent margin, and 56 percent want some or all US troops withdrawn.

Bush's inept response to Cindy Sheehan's encampment outside his ranch has begun to catalyze the administration's worst nightmare -- a revived antiwar movement led by the loved ones of GIs killed and Iraq veterans themselves.

But now what? Many legislators of both parties, such as Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican John McCain, who have been scathingly critical of the war but can't quite bring themselves to discuss withdrawal, also insist that America must ''stay the course,"

This is muddled thinking. There are exit strategies more likely to produce tolerable stability than the present course.

One approach, promoted by the former minister of electricity in Iraq's interim government, Aiham al-Sammarae, would pursue a political solution to what is plainly becoming a civil war. Sammarae, long a prominent opponent of Saddam Hussein, has conferred with a range of US officials. He proposes bringing in most excluded groups that now fuel the armed insurgency.

Sammarae ties this process to a phased US withdrawal, a reduction of Iranian influence, and a political settlement, with major armed resistance groups participating, except the minority of foreign Jihaddists and terrorists of the al-Zarkawi network, who would then be politically isolated.

As part of a stabilization process, US troops could be replaced by a multinational constabulary and reconstruction force. The US occupiers, now a resented lightning rod, would exit Iraq, sparing thousands of young Americans likely to be killed or maimed, and reducing the level of daily violence menacing Iraqis.

In the meantime, there is growing independence among GOP members of Congress who got a wakeup call last month when Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran highly critical of Bush, nearly won an upset special election in Ohio's most Republican congressional district. Republican Jean Schmidt won, 52-48, down from a 72 percent win in 2004 by incumbent Rob Portman, who stepped down to become US trade representative.

As Bush becomes a lamer duck by the day, Republicans now worry more about saving their own seats in 2006. Unlike Bush, they must listen to public opinion.

As support for withdrawal grows, so it grows in Congress. In May, five House Republicans, along with 123 Democrats, supported Representative Lynn Woolsey's amendment to the defense authorization bill calling on Bush to submit a withdrawal plan -- up from last January, when only 35 members of Congress, all Democrats, supported Woolsey's similar resolution. Woolsey plans hearings next month.

In the Senate, Republicans such as John McCain and Chuck Hagel have become more effective opponents of the Bush policy than their Democratic counterparts. The most prominent Democratic foreign policy spokesmen are fearful of seeming irresolute, and reluctant to embrace anything smacking of withdrawal.

A June op-ed column in The New York Times by Senator John Kerry criticized Bush, but proposed mainly better planning and training of Iraqis, and creation of a multinational force to secure Iraq's borders -- all smart variants on Bush's policy, but none likely to hasten America's withdrawal.

Public opinion is fast outflanking Bush's war. It remains to be seen which party will lead in cleaning up his mess.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.

© 2005 Boston Globe

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