[sweetjazz]

Andy, some perspective:

First, Bush's speeches don't reflect his inner thought process at all. While the president make his decisions without reference to polls (as he claims and I find this claim plausible), all of his speeches are poll-driven. Survey groups are constantly formed, and the reasons for a policy that are given are speeches are ones that poll well. Everybody -- no matter how they feel about Iraq -- want our troops to be safe and would like them to have high morale. That's why Bush always pulls the "all criticism hurts troop morale" card. It's effective on a lot of moderate people who don't spend much time thinking about Iraq. The use of polling to sell policy has been steadily rising over the past several decades. Clinton did it more than any predecessor as far as I can tell (though Reagan may have been close). The Bush administration has just taken it to another level.

The administration repeatedly deflects criticism by mischaracterizing what their opposition says and using stupid, misleading arguments. This is nothing new and Democrats try to do it just as much. Bush is just really good at it. This is the administration which keeps talking about all the progress that has been made in Iraq -- as a convenient distraction to the fact that the insurgency has also grown in strength during the past two years. But why should that reality stop them from predicting that the insurgency is in its "last throes?" Like any good political machine, this administration is fantastic about giving Americans a false sense of security.

There doesn't seem to be anything factually inaccurate in what the president said (except perhaps the same intelligence claim -- and even that is still more or less true to a certain degree). Of course, each sentence is barely connected to the next, and so he conveniently brings up campus lefties who make the ignorant oil claims right before talking about people in Congress. He doesn't say that the people in Congress were making the oil claims, but it certainly seems that he doesn't mind if people make the association anyway.

Notice how meaningless his final sentence is. Our troops need to know that "our support will be with them in good days and bad." Of course, there has been constant support for our troops throughout the war, and rightly so. What Democrats don't support are some of the administration's strategical decisions in Iraq. Bush manages to subtly conflate support for the administration's inept policies with support for the troop's heroic efforts.

And then he adds that "we will settle for nothing less than complete victory." What does that mean? That we won't leave Iraq until every insurgent is captured or killed? That is a ridiculously unreasonable goal. What does "complete victory" mean? Conveniently, it means nothing and doesn't even make sense as a goal in Iraq. But it sounds good to imply that Democrats don't want "complete victory."

It's not that Bush tries to get away with direct lies (which would be a foolish thing to do). It's just that his administration is willing to say anything that could be construed as factually accurate if it supports their cause, and will try to deflect attention from any facts that don't help their cause. Throw in some meaningless propoganda, and you have a typical Bush speech. Most people would say that what they do fits into what is legitimate for politicians to do. Maybe so, but unfortuantely, it's not in our country's best interests. (And BOTH PARTIES do this all the time, and the general public doesn't complain loudly enough against BOTH SIDES when they do it.)