I've had enough Kool-Aid, thank you

Two days before Bush is due to give his "feel good" speech on the Iraq war there was another bloody day there and Rumsfeld under cut him.

The Mosul attacks came as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld echoed remarks by his advisers in recent months suggesting that the insurgency could last as long as a dozen years and that Iraq would become more violent before elections later this year.

The rate of insurgent attacks remains steady, but the typical attack has grown more lethal, Mr. Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday." "They're killing a lot more Iraqis," he said.

At the same time a Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that people have had enough Kool-Aid and don't see things getting better in Iraq and perhaps more importantly don't think a victory over the insurgents in Iraq will have a major impact on terrorism.

Barely one in five Americans -- 22 percent -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker while 24 percent believe it is strengthening. More than half -- 53 percent -- say resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government forces has not changed.

[...]

The public was sharply divided over another widely publicized claim about Iraq made by a top administration official. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking last week in Brussels, asserted in a address to the 80-nation conference on the reconstruction of postwar Iraq that a victory over anti-government and U.S. forces will be "a death knell for terrorism as we know it" elsewhere. But fewer than half -- 46 percent -- of those interviewed agreed that defeating the insurgents in Iraq would do much to defeat terrorism elsewhere while 53 percent said it would have, at best, only some positive impact on the broader anti-terrorism campaign.

Like Social Security, I think we can anticipate that support for the war and Mr Bush's approval rating will actually decline after Tuesday's speech.