His own private Iraq

The French royal family the Bourbons, it was said, learned nothing and forgot nothing. For them it was a habit; for President Bush it's a principle. That way, he gets to declare that "Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror" with the serenity of someone whose television has been broken for a while.

The above is from David Sarasohn's commentary in The Oregonian today, THE PRESIDENT EXPLAINS.

S peaking to the nation Monday evening, President Bush continued with his favorite way of talking about Iraq:

Don't talk about Iraq.

Talk about D-Day and Iwo Jima.

Talk about graduation ceremonies at West Point.

Talk about radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons -- which we now know isn't about Iraq.

Talk about Harry Truman.

And, whenever the subject of Iraq seems inescapable, talk about 9/11.

Although George W. Bush may stay in is bubble the American people watch the news and read the paper.

The Iraqi government appears to be getting shakier by the day, dividing between Shiite parties who want a loosely connected federalism and Sunni parties who fear that it will cut them out of Iraq's oil revenues. In the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, according to the senior Marine intelligence officer in Iraq, both the government and overstretched U.S. forces have lost control, and the strongest force is probably the growing local faction of al-Qaida.

It turns out there is a connection between al-Qaida and Iraq -- at least, there is now.

Then there's the mounting daily body count in Baghdad -- which, we also learned last week, had been considerably undercounted in last month's original report.

Last week, the president's strongest ally in the "coalition of the willing," British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was forced to name a date for his resignation by his own party, which feared that his support for the war in Iraq would cripple its election chances.

You can see why President Bush, speaking to Americans about his foreign policy, would rather describe the courage of Americans on 9/11.

Yes George W. Bush must continue to talk about 911 because everything he's done since has been a failure.