It was hard, wasn't it, to see Anderson Cooper interviewing the troops last night? They were describing all the good they are doing and asking for support from home. They feel so loved by the Iraq people. (Good thing that it is axiomatic in the military that the troops don't decide the strategy.)
And then there's Bush's face on CNN.com as he declares he accepts responsibility for sending the troops in on false information. (I don't think that makes his doing so exactly a mistake, because it such a blow for freedom - well, for those who live through it maybe.)
But the worst is yet to come.
The worst, IMHO, are the new polls with the numbers going up again. For Bush. According to CNN:
Forty-eight percent of those polled said they thought it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq, as opposed to 54 percent of those polled last month. Fifty percent said it was not a mistake, compared to 45 percent last month.
This doesn't exactly track opinion about whether we are winning. Rather,
Despite an apparent surge in approval for sending troops to Iraq, those polled said they don't believe that the U.S. is winning the war...[only] 36 percent said the United States is winning.
Here's my first reaction: This is a completely impossible situation. We have an electorate so ill-educated and ill-equipped to reason well that there can't be a short term solution.
So help! What can we do? Have we been wrong to think Bush has been falling flat on his face? Is everyone just cheered up by the holidays and lower gas prices?