Earlier this week John McCain made news for criticizing the war effort. Now he's making news by stressing support for it.

Embattled Republican Congressman Chris Shays is now calling to set a "timetable for the withdrawal" of U.S. troops and Joe Lieberman says he's willing to "take a look" at Shays' proposal.

Ironically enough, all of this is happening just as we're seeing improvement in the security situation in Baghdad. Columnist David Ignatius, no huge fan of the Bush administration's management of the war, recognized the progress in a column filed from Baghdad Thursday. In tomorrow's Washington Post, Ignatius files another column from Iraq in which he writes "We don't need radical new plans for federalism, or sharp deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops, as anxious members of Congress have recently recommended."

Ignatius argues we should set deadlines for the transition to Iraqi control buttressed with local incentives for success and penalities for failure. To accomplish a successful transition, Ignatius says that "Americans need a little more patience and Iraqis a little less."