WASHINGTON -- James Baker almost smiled.

When the poker-faced co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group heard a commentator, who had been invited to advise the group, say that America's aim must be ``victory,'' Baker's stony visage betrayed the bitter amusement that the word ``victory'' now occasions. Not even the word ``success'' seems elastic enough to cover any attainable outcome. Remember the ``demonstration effect'' that Iraq's self-governance was to have in transforming the region? Although America's vice president calls Iraq ``a fellow democracy,'' it lacks a government whose writ runs beyond Baghdad's Green Zone.

John McCain seethed.

Weeks ago, he had been with a proud father of a Marine who was then in Iraq. Recently, McCain had heard that the son's legs had been blown off. ``At the hips,'' McCain said, intensely, several times, with a clenched-jaw fury born of frustration. Fifteen minutes later, on ABC's ``This Week,'' McCain brought a steely clarity to the Iraq debate.

For three years he has been saying, correctly, that there are far too few U.S. troops in Iraq. For months he has said we cannot win without many more troops. That, too, is correct -- if it does not imply that some surge of troops can now guarantee winning. He has also said: Absent a commitment to send significantly more troops to Iraq, it would be ``immoral'' to keep asking the same number of troops ``to risk life and limb so that we might delay our defeat for a few months or a year.''

George Stephanopoulos: ``President Bush has said he doesn't want to send more troops now. So by your own standards isn't it currently immoral to keep Marines and soldiers, other service people in Iraq?''

McCain: ``Yes it is.''

Moments later, Stephanopoulos asked: ``At what point do you say, I am not going to be complicit with an immoral policy?''

McCain: ``When I think we've exhausted every possibility to do what is necessary to succeed and not until then because the consequences of failure are catastrophic. ... We left Vietnam, it was over, we just had to heal the wounds of war. We leave this place, chaos in the region and they'll follow us home. So there's a great deal more at stake here in this conflict in my view. A lot more.''

Stephanopoulos: If the Iraq Study Group does not call for an increase in troops as you've advocated, ``will you call for American troops to come home?'' Continued...