Only days after he began a political offensive against Democratic critics of the war in Iraq, President Bush has been given a hint that blaming just one side won't squelch concerns that some in his own party have about the conduct of the war. What the U.S. Senate did Tuesday can be interpreted in several ways, but it's clear that growing public restiveness motivated the bipartisan resolution that emerged.

By a margin of 79-19, the Senate voted for a Republican-proposed measure that said 2006 "should be a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." It calls for the Bush administration to "explain to Congress and the American people its strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq" and to provide reports every three months until all U.S. combat brigades have been withdrawn.

Some Republicans -- indeed Mr. Bush himself -- downplayed the importance of the vote and even saw it as a victory of sorts, because a previous Democratic measure, rejected 58-40, called for a plan outlining estimated dates for a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces.

It is true that the version that passed should not be onerous for the administration to fulfill. Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said he considered not voting for it because he saw it "as sort of a nothing vote." It was, he thought, "Congress just sort of puffing its chest a little bit."

But that puffing wasn't nothing. It is an indication that Mr. Bush's repeated pledge to stay the course in Iraq has taken on the empty tone of a banal cliche and is not cutting it anymore with the folks back home. The senators on both sides of the aisle are now looking for something that has always been missing from this administration -- an exit strategy.

In his pointedly political speech on Veterans Day, Mr. Bush focused his criticism on Democratic critics who charge that the administration manipulated intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq. In passing the resolution, Senate Republicans weren't siding with those critics, but they were expressing some related unease at large in the nation.

Assertions by Mr. Bush that "as Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down" and "we will settle for nothing less than victory" -- both of which he proclaimed in the Nov. 11 speech -- are far from satisfying anymore. When will Iraqis be able to stand up? How does Mr. Bush define victory? Is victory even realistic to expect in a global war on terror? Aren't pockets of terrorists always going to exist in a turbulent and divided world?

Unfortunately, on the vexed question of the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, an enduring source of shame to the United States, the Senate on the same day endorsed the administration's procedures for detaining and prosecuting terrorism suspects. But even in this, some bipartisan disquiet expressed itself: The provision also would let detainees appeal their status and punishments to a federal court in Washington, D.C.

On the highly complex situation in Iraq, Mr. Bush has repeatedly offered simplistic explanations, as if the American public were so many children being told a tale about fantasy land. On Tuesday, with the prospect of elections next year, the adults in the Senate began to stir.