I watched FOX because, well I'm a little sick that way. I don't know if it was Mort or one of the other propagandists but he said it was the best Speach Bush has ever given.

Digby said that he saw Biden give the thumbs up for leveling with the American people. Not sure what speach he was watching.

It would be nice if someone like the Daily Show could go through and show that everything he said has been said thousands of times before. A clip like they did last week showing Bush/Blair doing the same speech.

I've never bought that the Bushies were trying to directly connect 9-11 to Iraq (as in Saddam perpetrated the event), and I still don't see it.

Rather, they suggest that 9-11 requires greater vigilance and a lower threshhold for confronting threats, which reqired that Iraq be regarded in a different light. . This doesn't explain or justify their actions however and doesn't account for why they don't do more about North Korea and Iran, however.

Further, I find the outrage of a figure like Gergen to be based on a very condescedning notion about the intelligence of the average listener. I'm against the war for a varety of reasons, but I know many who support it--none of whom directly tie 9-11 to Saddam.

Any reflexive outrage about supposedly tying 9-11 to Iraq lacks subtelty of thought or even a minimal comprehension of what's actually being asserted.

I've mentioned several times on TPM, that I don't have much confidence in the American public to have the intelligence or critical thinking skills or a combination, to be able to decipher what is really going on, and for those with the intelligence and / or critical thinking skills - they override these with their stubborn allegiance to their political beliefs.

But - I am pondering if this used car salesman speech might be a tipping point speech that is the one where swing voters who watched the speech can see the B.S. through the smoke screen.

I'm going to be optimistic tonight and hope that just happened.

If Fox News raved about the speech, then in a similar manner, I hope it'll be the tipping point speech where Fox watchers, the ones who are moderate and swing voters, will have thought to themselves they have had enough with Fox News and its propaganda, it's dishonesty, (and the President's dishonesty.)

I hope that just happened.  But I can never be sure.  As - well - Bush was voted in for a 2nd term, and you would have thought that never would have happened.

And on top of it all, i'm not sure how many Bush voters fall into the category of always acting out of "stubborn allegiance to their political beliefs and/or pocket books."

JimG,

I don't see how many swing voters (or many other voters for that matter) would have gotten a negative impression from this speech. I think it was delivered well and will give reinforcement to some people who were getting nervous about the Iraq effort over the last few months but who hadn't decided completely against it yet. Score one for the prez.

My hope would be that the falling confidence of the public on this issue would give Bush some pause perhaps to reassess his methods, but, unfortunately, he just saw a need to shore up his numbers with a decent speech instead of taking the hint.

you're kidding, aren't you, anon? you truly don't understand the attempt to connect 9/11 and Iraq and all the Arab bad guys into one package?

He didn't say anything he hasn't repeated before. I don't think this will work. Even the soldier props at Fort Bragg didn't help because he didn't get any applause until a Republican advance man initiated some late in the speech. They seemed disengaged. And Bush seemed a little subdued by their lack of enthusiasm.

Biden is my secret diet plan. Everytime i see him I lose my appetite.  And this clown thinks he can capture not only the nomination but the election in '08? Did he watch the unstoppable bandwagon that was the Lieberman campaign in '04? I think not.

Expecting Bush to come out and say something original or come up with a genuine plan or truly rouse the nation (other than when we have been actually attacked)  is like the old definition of a second marriage -- the triumph of hope over experience.  And America may be getting ready for a second divorce.

We've at least become sophisticates of our own bamboozlement, I guess.

It's hard for me to keep all of the pronouns straight here.

First, there is the group of us (we) that have seen through the bamboozlement from the start.  The feeling I've heard over and over hasn't been sophistication, so much as chagrin...over the fact that Bush could bamboozle everybody else (despite our protests).

Second, there's the mainstream press, for whom the Downing Street Memos are old news.  Although they appeared to have been bamboozled, they now say they knew the truth all along (i.e. they are just as sophisticated as "we" were).  It's just that they didn't care to share their insights with the American people (thereby facilitating the bamboozlement).

Finally, there's the group that have been bamboozled on a consistent basis, until perhaps recently.  But Toto has pulled the curtain aside, forcing Bush to frantically tell them to pay no attention to the man behind the screen. 

This group, I think, will proceed slowly down the path of opposition to White House policy.  Nobody likes to admit that they had been bamboozed, after all.  

But at least it's good to see that the press is now (finally) holding their hand along that journey.

And yet, my dint of his profession, Gergen knows.  It will be somewhat effective.  Very few people actually view Iraq and Afghanistan as separate issues, very few question that the Iraq operations are part of the "War on Terror."  Bush has effectively conflated the issue and made Iraq seem like a part of the 9-11 reaction and, when the history books are written, people will say that the Iraq invasion wouldn't have happened had 9-11 not.

And, in a sense, that is true, isn't it?  I'm not saying that Iraq actually had anything to do with 9-11, because I don't think it did and, hey, it didn't.  But... we never would have invaded, if not for 9-11, it would have been impossible.  We were not going to sacrifice 1,700 plus America lives and 100,000 plus Iraqi lives over... corruption in the Oil for Food Program.

What I fear is this... Bush found a vast historical rationale, a theme and even a mythos that completely drowns away all of the specific wrongs, the same way that we now think of the Trojan War as being the result of "The Face that Lost a Thousand Ships" even though that's not why it happened.

The Republic of Vietnam had about as much politiocal legitimacy & popular supporft as the Rpublic of Iraq has in 2005. The problem in Vietnam was not selling out an ally so much as it was creating the shell of an ally that could not possibly stand on its own.

I listened to the speech on the radio (mercifully).  The basic message seemed to be "We're not going to do anything differently; no withdrawal and no additional troops.  It's all going according to plan."  It was like watching someone fall down a flight of stairs in front of a crowd, get up and say, "I meant to do that."  That was followed by 10 minutes of Bush trying to wrap himself in the troops. 

At this point I don't care if his poll numbers go up or down.  It's 6 months too late.

No kidding.  You don't suppose he'd like to inform us that under his leadership (Commander in Chief) that we've already spent much more time on the war on terror than we did to defeat Germany.  Or that Saddam has already spent 2 more months just cooling his heels than it took to get from the surrender in Germany up to the hanging of the first 11 at Nuremburg.  Humm??? Wonder if they just hope to keep Saddam cooling his heels until 2008 elections so that when he calls his first witness (41) it won't look so bad.

Well Rove is home laughing at least. I think they've usually given George a glass of milk and sent him to bed by then.

I know many who support it--none of whom directly tie 9-11 to Saddam.

I know more than a few who support the war and who DO connect Saddam to 9/11. 

The thing is, and this doesn't apply to anchors or reporters, but Gergen is paid to provide a somewhat dispassionate analysis of politics, and as I said, in this case, I think his analysis was spot on.  In fact, I said a very similar thing to my mother on the phone - I was disgusted by the 4912 reference to "September the 11th", but we both agreed that it would likely work in rallying at least some public support to his side for a time.




The same can be said of his use of Fort Bragg as backdrop and the soldiers as props.  There was no reason he couldn't have given that speech from the Oval, but he did it this way in order to fuse himself and everything he says with "the troops", who have universally high support even among war critics.  I find this dispicable, but I must acknowledge that it'll probably also work.




Does that make sense?




But, and I freely acknowledge this, Gergen is one of my favorite voices to listen to, because even when I disagree with him, I can respect him, a rare trait among TV commentators.  I find him to be not party hackish and pretty blunt about most things.  He could have, and many did, make the same point without the consideration that it's offensive whether it works or not.

the outrage of a figure like Gergen to be based on a very condescedning notion about the intelligence of the average listener.

I'm afraid that a lack of intelligence is probably the kinder explanation; the only other possible reasons for linking the ouster of an annoying, but mostly secular, dictator to fundamentalist terrorists involve racism and/or religious discrimination.  After all, that's really all they actually had in common.

Bush can connect 9/11 to Iraq because Osama and Saddam are both Muslims. I think that's most of what he's hitting there.

If you're really generous to him, you can think up how this might all tie together in some democracy way.  

The war on Terror is really a war on a big chunk of the Muslim world. In that way Bush can make the connection. I don't think we're going to win, but for now he gets away with it because it's true on that level.

The real connection between 9/11 and Iraq is emotional.  9/11 turned a lot of people's paranoia level up to '12' on a scale of 1-10.  I don't think there are a tremendous number who really think (or care) that there is an evidentiary link -- its more that their imagination is fueled by their paranoia.  Saddam's always been out to get us, tried to kill Poppy, regularly rapes and then shreds women, children and small pets, why wouldn't he want to help terrorists?

It's the same reason duct tape sales went off the charts.  9/11 scared a lot of Americans to death to the point that they were willing to accept whatever came along.  If we had a week without bombs right now, Bush's numbers would improve.  I bet this speech bumps him up some.

Gergen: It was offensive to him personally but probably politically effective?

Didn't he mean that it was offensive to him personally BECAUSE it was politically effecitve?

Many hours and rewrites go into a speech like this, I know, but I still think the most important take-aways are the broadest-brush ones.

I lost count of how many times he used "terror" and "terrorists." He used it in many cases when it wasn't even necessary.

Gergen's highbrow distate notwithstanding, the references to 9-11 were just part of the theme.

And the theme was what won him the election.

Fear.

Terrorists are coming to get you. Be afraid. My war will save you. Follow me.

Thank you, and may an evangelical Protestant and Muslim-hating God bless America.

OK, so we've had our say and tomorrow there'll be some POLLs that'll tell all the lemmings how THEY should feel about the President's speech, yadda yadda yadda.

What I Really Want To Know...

...is how our troops in Iraq felt about the President's speech.

For months, many of us have been wondering what the hell the well-educated / experienced members of our officer corps and War Colleges think about this tactically self-defeating / strategically bizarre military campaign?

I mean, at some point ~ we would expect the oft-stated, "This Sucks!" sentiment of our ground troops to eventually be as well expressed by our officer corps...

...because if THEY don't "get it", if THEY are not also reaching a "tipping point" of awareness ~ then, damn! we've got problems, folks -- There really *IS* a threat to America, and we really NEED an effective defense force.

That's the HELL of it, n'est-ce pas?

While we're talking politics, they're BLEEDING :-/

"the troops understood they were fighting for a democracy"
A democracy? A? Which one?
There is only one democracy the U.S. military is required to fight for.
Maybe the General may want to take a refresher course on the Constitution.

Wesley Clark has the most effective smack down of Bush that I've seen.  He almost had Brit Hume in tears.  What the hell was Roger Ailes thinking?

 After talking about how great the troops are and how glad he is that Bush is trying to raise their morale, blah, blah, blah, he grabs the dagger and drives it right into Bush's kidney.

He dispassionately states:  Don't forget this was an elective war.  We did not have to fight this war.  This is Bush's war.  He chose to fight this war. Saddam was not a threat, he had no connection to 9/11, he had no WMD.  Now that we are there, we have to win.  It is a recruiting dream for al-Qaeda.

He ends by saying it is quite a dilemna.  We can't leave, but we create more terrorists who normally wouldn't be terrorists the longer we stat.  Quite a dilmna.   

No.  I was there, and it appears to me that the South Vietnamese government had substantially more support than these guys.  I was able to live in Vietnamese cities and browse the markets freely.  From what I can make out, no American could do that in Iraq today and live. 

Although I haven't been in favor of setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, I thought the president made a good argument for one. Since our goal in Iraq has devolved into getting the Iraqi army ready so we can leave, and since the president thinks the Iraqification of the fight against the insurgency is going so well, and since the president asserts that setting a timetable would cause the insurgents to "wait us out":
 
1) The task left of finishing the training of Iraqui forces is very suitable to a timetable.
 
2) If the insurgents stop attacking us (waiting us out) until we leave, that is a good consequence as far as the president's logic goes.

While I'm not sure that a pragmatic ten percent is what got Dub his second term, I certainly agree that Kerry would have been flayed by the right at this point.

Every night, Dubya should thank his lucky stars (or maybe the God he ostentatiously worships) for 9/11. Without it, where would he be by now? Out of office, his only legacy an attempt to foist a miserable bag of right-wing goodies on the nation. 9/11 became his regime's justification for everything, and has carried him this far. Does he really care about America? I wonder, given that his entire career has been not about patriotism or public service, but about power and pelf.

He wasn't Ed Murrow, but I was impressed with sports reporter Bob Costas as a fill-in for Larry King.  Costas questioned a number of folks in the wake of Bush's Fort Bragg pep rally and, although he got many of the same slippery non-answers, at least his questions were more direct and well-articulated than most I heard last night.  Certainly Costas was more on-target than Larry "Marshmallow" King.  In fact, compared to King -- and most of the Big Media stars -- Costas souonded like the late and loonie Joe Payne.  I'd like to see him pinch-hit at the next presidential news conference, should there ever be another.

 If you Google   9/11/01 Research   you  can  read all Summer or just start with the link below. 

 http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/28031. htm 

We hear the courage and the service of the military lauded constantly from all parts of the political landscape.

 My question is, if the officer corps is so dedicated and brave, why don't any of them tell the truth?  Why don't any of the senior officers in charge of this fiasco resign?

But, sadly, so will we and so will our miltary.

Sorry, clarification to a bad paraphrase.  The general said basically that they were fighting as the armed forces of a democracy and understood the the population at large supported them while not necessarily supporting the policies of the Bush administration.  He then said the troops could easily live with and understand that point. I thought it was well put. 

Liberals have one plan......attack, attack, attack...Whao!!!!!!!

That is the "flypaper doctrine."  We send our troops to Iraq to attract and destroy the "terrorists" there so that the terrorists will not bother us in the US.   The troops are like flypaper, placed in Iraq to attract terrorists. 

The problem is that the "flypaper doctrine" is incompatible with the "bringing freedom to Iraqis" justification for the war.

Under the "flypaper doctrine" we send our troops to Iraq to attract the terrorists to there instead of here.  As a result, Iraq becomes more dangerous, but, theoretically, our country is less dangerous.  To maintain public safety, the Iraqi government has to be more repressive.  That makes Iraqis less free.  Therefore, thanks to our flypaper strategy, Iraq is less free. 

The flypaper doctrine is working pretty well -- for the jihadists.

I think Gergen is better than most, but still rather lacking. It's a case of lowered expectations from the MSM, where nobody seems able to tell it straight.

 I agree that it was obnoxious, and agree that so far it has been effective.

The problem I have is that the MSM doesn't take any responsibility for letting what is an obnoxious distortion of the truth, be effective.

Lies are only "effective" on an ignorant public. It's the media's job to inform. The media commenting that lies are effective, without any mea culpa, is a problem.

I'd be writing Gergen a thank you letter and putting his picture on my fridge if he had the guts to say: "and we collectivly the media are to blame for not informing the public of these lies"

BTW, not criticising Gergen per se, again he's bettter than most, but the MSM overall is pathetic. 

Newsweek's Jon Meacham's commentary was over the top and frankly I was astounded by spin he was pandering.

All I want to know is, where is the missing 9 billion dollars?

Here's what McClellan said at the press briefing on the 27th:

Tomorrow, the President will also talk about the strategy for success.  he will talk in a very specific way about the way forward.  There is a clear path to victory.
Quite simply, I'm not sure my expectations were met.

Take a look at Sen. George Allen some time, you know he's probably going to run for pres in 08, he is even smirkier than W.

LOL!!  That smirky grin of George Allen's has bugged me for years!  Every time I see him, I have the urge to wipe it off his face.  And no question, Allen is a George W. Bush wannabe:

The grin: 

<img border="0" title="The grin" alt="The grin" src="http://allen.senate.gov/photos/VaSportsHOF.4.22.05.w.jpg"> 

The "cowboy":

<img border="0" title="The cowboy" alt="The cowboy" src="http://www.virgilgoode.us/greenegeorge.jpg"> 

Hmmm, the pictures are showing up in the edit window, but not in the preview.  Dunno if they'll make the post or not, but let's give it a try. 

jeez, that 'cowboy' pic is priceless.  I sure hope we aren't saddled with that hump after enduring (assuming we endure) Bush.

There may have been a post on TPM, too, but for sure there was an article in the Washington Monthly.

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.

Even the soldier props at Fort Bragg didn't help because he didn't get any applause until a Republican advance man initiated some late in the speech. They seemed disengaged.

According to one of the reporters on NPR this morning, the soldiers were instructed not to applaud, cheer, or otherwise react during the course of the speech.  That truly puzzled me.  If the purpose was to use the soldiers as a backdrop, why tell them not to react?  Were Bush's handlers afraid of making their opportunism too obvious, or were they afraid that Bush might get boos as well as cheers?  Since the Bushies have never before been shy about looking opportunistic, I'm wondering if it wasn't the latter they were concerned about.

Wow, I too have such a negative visceral reaction to Bush when he does his 'Karl Rove media creation' acting.  I found myself yelling back at the TV! 
Bush has failed miserably at being a 'war pres', and what he really demonstrated last night was that he has this needy immature ego that would like to identify his personally created  immoral and illegal Iraq war with past wars of honor.  He asks Americans to blindly follow his faulty leadership and join him in pretending that his faults are virtues of 'steadiness at the helm".   To the horror of good Republicans, Bush is no true conservative, nor is he moral, intelligent or mature enough to see and correct his policies......seems to me he just desperately wishes we'd  each and all agree to help sustain his personal ego so he doesn't have to grow up and grapple with the real world where adult leadership and wisdom are necessary.

Immoral Relativism - Tom Engelhardt


The slut dat we done brung

I didn't watch the speech last night. I am not ashamed to say it.  I don't want to waste my time watching a charlatan trying to con folks.  I find the man totally repulsive.


So thank you. Thanks for the read on Clark's performance.  I am delighted to see him stepping up to the plate for he is probably the most effective and credible spokesperson the so-called "opposition Party" has on this issue.


He's also very skilled politically. Today, WESPAC sent out an email. So did Ted Kennedy and a few others...MoveOn..  All of them, save Clark's, not surprisingly took the Bush speech for their topic.

This was Clark's 
<h2 class="title">Stop Blaming the Troops - Investigate the Real Culprits of Abuse</h2&gt
 

I've never been able to figure out why Afghanistan couldn't have been the flypaper. I mean, our troops were there, terrorists were already there...what's up? Not sticky enough? Well, who's stuck now?

There is so much evidence from research  out there that the official version  of the "collapse" of the Twin Towers is a sham and a cover up, it is no surprise that the Main Stream Media  won't touch the issue, but it does not seem to be getting any traction anywhere.   Perhaps it is seen as just another scandal,  but this is a BIG BIG MAJOR MAJOR issue because Bush keeps using it as a reason for  war. 
 
It is interesting that The Iraqi Resistance nail the issue right on the head in their 6/29/05 reply to Bush's Speech, yet Americans remain totally ignorant  of and uninterested in the  issue.  Truth is  stranger than fiction  by any measure!  This is a glaring example of the effect of the MSM Main Stream Media blackout of news others know around the world, but Americans don't know. 

I do not make this stuff up. I just read what is out there on the net. One does not have to believe it all, but there is a mountain of evidence, photos, videos, too much to ignore.  

Iraqi Resistance Replies To Bush Speech:  Sets Terms For U.S. Surrender

Bush……..Why the Hurry?!?!

06/29/05