Apparently with an eye towards Gen. David Patraeus’ upcoming congressional testimony, the president is involved in yet another p.r. push to defend staying the course in Iraq.
President Bush delivered a rousing defense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday, mixing faith and foreign policy as he told a group of Christian broadcasters that his policies in the region were predicated on the beliefs that freedom was a God-given right and “every human being bears the image of our maker.”
In a 42-minute speech to the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Mr. Bush called upon European allies to step up their efforts in Afghanistan, and conceded that recent security gains in Iraq “are tenuous, they’re reversible and they’re fragile.” Still, he insisted that his troop buildup there was succeeding.
“The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency,” Mr. Bush said, to a standing ovation. “It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”
And if he can say that while stomping his feet and pounding the podium, someone might actually believe this. Or not.
We’re probably past the point at which it’s useful to fact-check Bush speeches about Iraq, but as long as the White House is gearing up for a public-relations campaign, we might as well highlight some of the president’s more noticeable whoppers.
Bush, for example, said:
“Just over a year ago, things were not going well in Iraq. Terrorists and extremists were succeeding in their efforts to plunge Iraq into chaos. American peace and security required us to defeat this enemy, just as I said. So my administration reviewed our strategy, and changed course with victory in mind. I sent reinforcements into Iraq in a dramatic policy that’s now being called ‘the surge.’ […]
“The Iraqi people saw these efforts; they had renewed faith in America’s commitment to the fight. As you can imagine, during that period of time a lot of folks were wondering, is America going to stay with us? Do they understand our deep desire to live in freedom? Can we count on them? And when they found out they could, they launched a surge of their own. Increasing numbers of Sunni leaders have turned against the terrorists and begun to reclaim their communities. […]
“And as a return on our success — in other words, as we get more successful, troops are able to come home. They’re not coming home based upon defeat, or based upon opinion polls, or based upon focus groups, or based upon politics. They’re coming home because we’re successful.”
Either Bush is confused about the timing of the events in late 2006, or he’s hoping people won’t remember reality as it happened.
Alex Koppelman set the record straight.
First, Bush’s chronology implies that the “surge of their own” he refers to — the “Anbar Awakening” — happened after the U.S. troop surge began at the beginning of last year. In fact, Sunni actions against al-Qaida in Iraq predated the surge. Two years before that, Bush had rejected overtures of similar assistance from Sunni leaders.
Second, Bush attributed the withdrawal of some U.S. troops from Iraq to “a return on our success,” as he has before. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve pointed out several times now that success has little, if anything, to do with the withdrawals — they were necessitated by a military stretched to its breaking point by the surge.
Of course, why let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good ruse? It’s never stopped Bush before.
