Details of Bush's announcement have been so thoroughly leaked that the only thing left for the President to do is sell it -- which is probably why everything else was leaked. This is clearly the entire purpose of the president's address. The administration seems to be convinced that the only way the US can lose in Iraq is to lose the american public. We've seen glimpses of this before:
Ken Adelman, quoted by the New Yorker:
"[Donald Rumsfeld] was in deep denial—deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can't lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, 'Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.' He got upset and cut me off. He said, 'Excuse me,' and went right on with it."
Apparently, the belief is that you can fight a war pretty much forever. As long as you don't stop fighting, you can't lose. Of course, it helps if you can actually define 'a win' -- something the Bush administration has so far failed to do -- but there ya go.
Newsweek has a piece that includes this little snippet of info:
...A draft report recently produced by the Baghdad embassy's director of strategic communications Ginger Cruz and obtained by NEWSWEEK makes the stakes clear: "Without popular support from US population, there is the risk that troops will be pulled back ... Thus there is a vital need to save popular support via message." Under the heading DOMESTIC MESSAGES, Cruz goes on to recommend 16 themes to reinforce with the American public, several of which Bush is likely to hit: "vitally important we succeed"; "actively working on new approaches"; "there are no quick or easy answers."
The good news is that there's some recognition of public opinion, the bad news is that they want to make an end run around it...
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Tags: news | politics | Iraq | Bush | Military | propaganda | Frank Luntz | troop surge
