Reading the posted comments and diaries, I guess I am the only one seeing this differently. What I heard Bush say was blah blah blah "our troops will come home when the Iraqi forces stand up" blah blah blah "the Iraqi troops are standing up".
My conclusion combined with all the other recent administration balloons is that:
1)Bush has realized that keeping 150,000 troops in Iraq is no longer viable and adding enough troops to turn Iraq into a fully occupied police state is not within the realm of reality.
2)He cannot give the impression of retreat in the face of violence - he believes Bin Laden who says that America is weak (as demonstrated by Somalia, Beirut, etc.) and therefore a more viable target for terrorist attacks
3)He needs to show progress before the 2006 elections by having fewer troops on the ground resulting in fewer US casualties
4)He is therefore totally stuck between the need to withdrawal without calling it a retreat and has settled on a strategy to do that. This is exactly the charade played out with the Harriet Miers nomination. They realized she wasn't viable but couldn't retreat so they set up an excuse to retreat without calling it a retreat. The same thing is going on now.
This is a turning point - Bush has significantly lowered the bar for "victory" and is laying the groundwork for a large draw down of troop levels. Isn't this what we all want?
Sure, all the troops won't be home as fast as some would like. But there are many of us who opposed the war to begin with and blame Bush for numerous mistakes along the way who still believe that it would be a huge mistake to pull out too fast.
The debate has now finally shifted to when we withdrawal without leaving a complete and total mess behind. This is the debate we want. We should be celebrating this speech as a capitulation of "stay the course" and the imperial occupation dreams of the neocons.
I don't see how much more clearly Bush could reasonably expected to say "you were right, I was wrong".