Bush is going to address the nation tomorrow night in an attempt to counter plummeting support for his policy of endless war.
Rove and company have decided to go all out and use US military personnel as the backdrop. Lovely. I wonder if Bush will get to wear one of his dress-up uniforms.
If the message in Bush's speech can be inferred from the advance we've heard in the last few days-Cheney's "last throes," Condi's "generational commitment" and Rumsfeld's "12 years"-then Bush is in biiiiiig trouble, folks.
He thinks that the country can be bullied, cajoled or propagandized into continuing to support this bloody and increasingly pointless conflict. Why not? it's always worked before.
But the turning point, I believe, has been reached. You couldn't pick up a paper or turn on the news last week without hearing the phrase "6 in 10 Americans" think this war was a mistake. I do not think that ANY PR campaign is going to turn that around.
At $80 BILLION per year we're facing a "generational committment" of $1 TRILLION. The rationale and the justification for the invasion and occupation are increasingly weak, and Bush's ability to defend a failed policy is becoming more shrill and desperate. Witness the "I think about Iraq every day" and his presser with the Iraqi PM last week when he fell back on "it's hard work" several times.
The public and the SCLM is starting to wake up to the fact that Bush has no plan, no real idea what he's doing, and no ability to articulate a clear reason for staying in Iraq. Look for tomorrow's speech to be more of the same. My guess is that it won't halt Bush's slide. It may even accelerate it, as people in this country start to realize that we don't want to pour a trillion dollars and thousands of soldiers' blood into the sands of Iraq.