Timing. It's all timing.

Compare and contrast...

Sunday, August 21

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.

Monday, August 22

Hours before a midnight deadline, Shiites and Kurds reached an agreement Monday on a draft constitution and were trying to persuade Sunni Arabs to go along with their compromises, officials said.

Negotiators met for about three hours Monday morning and convened again shortly after 4 p.m. at the home of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani in the Green Zone for talks Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said would "be decisive." He said there was some progress in the earlier session.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said an agreement had been reached between the Shiites and the Kurds in the morning.