The fact that Bob Schieffer would recall the comment by Mussolini's aide, Count Ciano, that "victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan" in a CBS interview with US Gen Richard Myers yesterday indicates just how big a mood swing there has been in the United States after 11 days of war in Iraq.
As predictions of a speedy of liberation of repressed Iraqis have given way to warnings of more bloody battles ahead, the "orphan" to whom the Pentagon planners are pointing is Gen Tommy Franks, commander of all US forces in the Gulf Region.
Both Gen Myers, chief of the general staff, and Secretary of Defence Mr Donald Rumsfeld took pains over the weekend - as it sank in that the Pentagon had badly mistaken the likely course of war - to point out that it was Gen Franks's plan all along.
Everyone had signed off on the plan, said Mr Rumsfeld. Indeed, it was a "brilliant plan", said Gen Myers.
But it is not Gen Franks but the always confident and sometimes cocky Mr Rumsfeld who is suddenly very much on the defensive, after a flood of leaks from frustrated generals and scathing comments in the US media for his alleged failure to foresee what would happen.
The Washington Post claimed yesterday that several US military officers blame Mr Rumsfeld and his aides for inadequate troop strength on the ground in Iraq, and for micromanaging the deployment plan in an attempt to prove their own theory that a light, manoeuvrable force could handily defeat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The Post quoted a senior officer in Iraq as saying Mr Rumsfeld took significant risks by leaving key units in the US and Germany at the start of the war. That resulted in an invasion force that was "too small, strung out, underprotected, undersupplied and awaiting tens of thousands of reinforcements who will not get there for weeks."
Many officers blamed Mr Rumsfeld for constantly changing Central Command's troop deployment plan, known as the Time Phased Force and Deployment Data. A senior defence official said those changes delayed deployments by as much as 50 days.
The weekly New Yorker magazine, out today, also claims that Mr Rumsfeld rejected advice from Pentagon military planners and repeatedly overruled recommendations to deploy considerably more troops and equipment to Iraq, where there are currently an estimated 125,000 US and British troops and 100,000 more expected by the end of April.
The journal quoted a defence official as saying Mr Rumsfeld "thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn" and he overruled advice from Gen Franks to delay the beginning of military action in Iraq, after Turkey refused to allow deployment of American troops from its territory.
The New York Times veteran commentator Johnny Apple concluded yesterday in a front page commentary that the failure of the US to obtain permission from Turkey to open a northern front is now seen in Washington as a "diplomatic debacle".
It was also becoming more evident that the allies made two "gross military misjudgements" - that US-led forces could safely bypass Basra and Nasiriya, and that Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq would rise up against Saddam Hussein. In his defence, Mr Rumsfeld said that "it's a bit early for history to be written". He acknowledged on Fox News that "I would suspect that the most dangerous and difficult days are still ahead of us", but denied reports that he had rejected requests for extra troops.
"I think you'll find, if you ask anyone who's been involved in the process from the Central Command, that every single thing they've requested has in fact happened," he stated.
Asked about the problems posed by the suicide bombing that killed four US soldiers, he said there was "not a chance" that it would change the outcome of the war. However Gen Myers acknowledged yesterday on CBS that "we have to adjust our tactics, techniques and procedures" after the suicide bombing.
Despite the open comments by field commanders in Iraq of a "pause" to rest, regroup, and await reinforcement and supplies, the White House denied any such thing.
"When we say we're on the plan, we're on the plan," an administration official said after Mr Bush held a video conference with his war council from Camp David. "There is no pause."
The official said the President agreed with Mr Rumsfeld that the Coalition should push aggressively toward Baghdad rather than pause for a lengthy regrouping.
Mr Bush, who called the increasingly sceptical questions from journalists "silly", is totally immersed in following the war on television, said an aide, much more so than his father was in the first Gulf War.
Worries that victory in Iraq could come at too high a price are widespread in the US. Mr Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, warned that removing Saddam may now "result in a Muslim jihad against us and our friends" and that "achieving our narrow objective of regime change may take so long and trigger so many consequences that it's no victory at all".
Mr Rumsfeld has become a target for columnists and cartoonists. A cartoon in the Record newspaper shows Mr Rumsfeld as a film director instructing armed Iraqis: "No no no, you Iraqis are supposed to throw down your weapons and surrender. Let's try it again from the top."