That's one way of looking at it

WaPo:

Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.

Or, faced with midterm elections and an electorate that increasingly opposes an unnecessary, failed war that congressional Republicans wholeheartedly supported for the past four years, GOP lawmakers are cynically trying to shift blame to W, Bigtime, Rummy et al.