The Speech....continued

As I stated below there was nothing new in Bush's photo op address to the nation on Iraq. I didn't expect anything new so I wasn't surprised when he held up the same pig. I was a little surprised that no attempt was made to clean it up and give it a fresh coat of lipstick. I'm not going to give you a rundown on what the blogosphere was saying, that was as predictable as Bush's speech. Jack over at the CommonSenseDesk has some links. Both the New York Times and The Washington Post were quick with editorials. Both talked about missed opportunities and how there was nothing new.

The Washington Post: Mr. Bush on Iraq

PRESIDENT BUSH sought last night to bolster slipping public support for the war in Iraq by connecting it, once again, to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to the war against terrorism. That connection is not spurious, even if Saddam Hussein was not a collaborator of al Qaeda: Clearly Iraq is now a prime battlefield for Islamic extremists, and success or failure there will do much to determine the outcome of the larger struggle against them. But Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants, a transformation caused in part by his administration's many errors since Saddam Hussein's defeat more than two years ago.

[....]

Once again, however, the president missed an opportunity to fully level with Americans, even though some of the hard truths he elided have been spelled out by his aides and senior military commanders. The insurgency, they have said, is not growing weaker; most likely, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, it will never be defeated by American troops, and it will continue for many more years. Iraqi troops probably will not be ready to take over from U.S. units for several years, at least. For now, the combined U.S.-Iraqi force is nowhere near large enough to hold territory taken from the insurgents or to secure the country's borders. Yet Army and Marine units are being pressed into their third tours of duty, even as recruitment of fresh soldiers at home lags badly.

Mr. Bush's account of his strategy for Iraq, which has remained virtually unchanged in the past year, doesn't answer the worrying questions raised by these facts.

The New York Times: President Bush's Speech About Iraq

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

If the Times was really surprised that Bush used 911 they had to be about the only ones that were. When you don't have anything else just mention 911 a lot, that's what Bush has been doing since 912. I also wonder if either the Times or the Post are really surprised that there was nothing new, I'm not.

So what will the speech do to the approval of Bush's handling of the war? Bilmon perhaps say it best.

It buys him a favorable news cycle and a week, maybe two, of extreme lapdog obedience from the corporate media. It could move the polls his way by a couple of points. But after a month, and another 40 or 50 dead GIs, nobody will remember a word of it, not even G.W.

That sounds about right.

Update
David Corn has a good analysis this morning. Read the entire piece but this sums it up:

Bush's speech will not alter the landscape--here or in Iraq. It was the rhetorical equivalent of treading water. Before the speech, NPR had asked me to talk about the address afterward with a conservative pundit. Minutes before we were to go on, an NPR worker called. We've decided, she said, that there was not enough in the speech to warrant an analysis segment. I could hardly protest.