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Washington has earned a new sobriquet -- Sunni Triangle West. The mashing of molars and sharpening of knives is audible in the nation's capital as generals and civilian war hawks line up for the blame game. Contrary to Bush administration orders, the Rubicon is already well traversed.

From "failure is not an option" to "failure is now the only option" is the new message one hears in off-the-record think tank discussions with retired generals and former ranking Pentagon and CIA officials. The POW fiasco, with its global radioactive fallout, has left Operation Iraqi Freedom in intensive care.

One general reminded his audience of what one of his colleagues said to a North Vietnamese general at the 1972 Paris peace talks. "But you haven't won a single battle," said the American. "That's correct," the Vietnamese officer acknowledged, "but it's also irrelevant." The same could be said about the insurgents in Iraq. They cannot hope to win a single battle with U.S. forces. But they made sure that if U.S. Marines tried to conquer Fallujah, the ensuing bloodbath would have been a major victory for Islamist extremists.

Each night, Marines could hear Muslim imams on the loudspeakers at the top of mosque minarets urging their flocks to kill Americans. The Marines barely escaped "a perfect storm situation," said one civilian who was with them for almost a month. He was in awe as he shared the lives "of these young, tough, disciplined Marines who had confidence in themselves, not the mission."

"There was no coherent Fallujah game plan at the highest level," he explained. "While I was there, the Marine general negotiated with no less than seven delegations." Each kept jerking the general's chain and the ultimate solution was to give the poachers the game park.

Various formulations are being uttered to soften the blow of failure in Iraq. The new geopolitical jargon for the Iraqi exit ramps ranges from "suboptimal solutions" to "manageable strategic retreat." These are the alternatives to "disorderly strategic retreat" as seen by knowledgeable observers just back from the Iraqi theater. "We broke it, but we can no longer fix it," said one of them.

The heroes of 2003 are already the villains of 2004. The Pentagon's glamour "hunk" of last year's magazine cover stories has become the voodoo doll his State Department and CIA detractors like to stick pins in. "Rummy" Rumsfeld has teed off some powerful constituencies in the last three years.

First it was his own generals who were ignored as defense transformation plans began to take shape. Then came the Armed Services Committees of both houses of Congress. For months they complained about being left out of the loop as Mr. Rumsfeld kept them guessing. More recently, Colin Powell's undiplomatic diplomats and George Tenet's spooks have switched from pinpricks to heavy artillery.

The first CIA salvo appeared to be the latest leak to The New Yorker magazine's Seymour Hersh: Mr. Rumsfeld authorized exclusion from the Geneva Conventions for a special unit operating in Afghanistan that later transferred to Iraq. Garbage, sniffed a Pentagon spokesman.

The barrage has reduced to silence some of the neocon architects of the war. On May 7, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was briefing a group of young political science graduates when one of them asked him, "How would you define success in Iraq?" Silence followed as Mr. Feith shifted from foot to foot. He finally looked at his watch and said, "Well, that was the last question." He then left without answering it. Even Mr. Feith's aides were perplexed.