I was fooled, at first, by a terribly misleading headline on the front page of yesterday’s Washington Post. It told readers:
“President Plans Drive To Rescue Iraq Policy”
Silly me, I was momentarily encouraged. Maybe Bush was going to shift gears on a failed policy with some kind of new plan. Better late than never, right?
Alas, I was naïve. The headline said Bush would try to “rescue” his Iraq policy, but what it meant to say was that Bush would simply change his rhetoric again.
President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.
The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the limited transfer of political power June 30.
If all he’s doing is trying to “shift attention,” then it’s not really an “ambitious campaign.” The policy is still failing badly. Bush wants to just put a pretty bow on it so his poll numbers will stop dropping.
As Josh Marshall put it, “Finally, finally, the president has decided to confront the root problem in our troubled occupation of Iraq: the spin deficit.”
Be prepared for a lot of this.
In the first of at least six presidential speeches on Iraq before June 30, Bush will particularly try to counter growing criticism that Washington has lowered the goal posts for its year-long occupation, U.S. officials said.
Of course they’re moving the goal posts; they don’t really have a choice. Every prediction and promise about Iraq has proven faulty. War supporters promised a robust and free democracy, an ally that would help bring peace to Israel, and a liberal Arab country to spur reform throughout the Middle East. Now they’re committed to providing a “modicum of freedom” for Iraqis.
Watch for these subtleties when the spinner-in-chief tells us how optimistic he is tonight.