The White House is conceding that "stay the course" wasn't doing the job in describing U.S. policy in Iraq. That comes at a time when the administration has also begun to talk more publicly about changes in the strategy as well.

It was officially noted that the phrase had been put to rest today by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow during his "press gaggle."

Snow was being asked about President Bush's meetings over the weekend with U.S. military commanders and if there was any shift in strategy.

MR. SNOW: What you do in a time of war, you don't sit around and — I think anybody who has been a Commander-in-Chief knows that there's a certain folly to having ironclad predictions about what's going to happen. You hope it's going to succeed. And if it doesn't you work to fix it. And that's how the administration has approached this challenge.

Q: And is the framework still — is there still confidence in the framework?

MR. SNOW: If by the framework you mean training up Iraqi forces and professionalizing the police, and at the same time, using U.S. forces in a supplementary role, yes, that remains the general approach. Now the question is, what measures do you need to take within that framework to make sure that you not only secure troublesome Baghdad — I mean troublesome neighborhoods and violent neighborhoods in Baghdad, but keep them safe afterward. And that's the challenge and that's what they're working to address.

Q: Tony, it seems what you have is not "stay the course." Has anybody told the President he should stop calling it "stay the course" then?

MR. SNOW: I don't think he's used that term in a while.

Q: Oh, yes, he has, repeatedly.

MR. SNOW: When?

Q: Well, in August, because I wrote a story saying he didn't use it and I was quite sternly corrected.

MR. SNOW: No, he stopped using it.

Q: Why would he stop using it?

MR. SNOW: Because it left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, well, here's an administration that's just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is, when, in fact, it's just the opposite. The President is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory, but he also understands that it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification — or the greater precision.

Q: Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's stay the course since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?

MR. SNOW: No.

Bloomberg reports:

Democrats have been repeating the phrase, which Bush has used in speeches and other remarks, in their criticism of the president's policy as they campaign to overturn the Republican majority in Congress in the Nov. 7 election. The administration and congressional Republicans are countering by trying to reshape the debate on the war, which polls show is increasingly unpopular with the U.S. public.