The Generals are jumping ship. Retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, onetime head of the US army in Iraq, is the latest to put daylight between himself and the White House. The Bush team, he said in early October, is "incompetent and corrupt." Their policies in the Iraq sector, he pointed out, would have earned them a court martial had they been in the military.

Times have changed. Over the summer of 2007, Sheehan challenged Pelosi to begin impeachment proceedings by July 23. When the Speaker did not do so, Sheehan announced that she would run against Pelosi in the 2008 elections.

"The country is ripe for change," she said, and one piece of it was to remove leaders like Pelosi who "protected the status quo" of the corporate elite.

As the occupation of Iraq begins to seem more and more permanent, the US Congress has turned its attention to other seemingly intractable problems.