Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The Speech

I had a performance tonight so I missed The Speech. I was mainly interested in whether Bush would live up to his own press secretary's promise...
    ...[T]hat Bush would talk in a "very specific way" about a two-track strategy that involves preparing the Iraqi forces to defend themselves, and helping the newly elected government to develop as a democracy.

    Asked whether the speech would yield new details, McClellan said, "I think many Americans have not heard much of what the president has to say tomorrow night. And the American people are rightly concerned about where we are in Iraq."

    "At a time like this, when it is a critical moment in Iraq, it is important for the president of the United States, as commander-in-chief, to talk to the American people about the nature of the enemy that we face and ... the way forward to victory in Iraq," McClellan said.

Apparently Bush missed the mark, as the speech resembled a "Greatest Hits compilation of all his past evasions of responsibility, false analogies, refusals to correct course, and cheap acts of demagoguery" in the words of Ed Kilgore and with repeated invocations of 9/11 that even David Gergen found "insulting." The New York Times says Bush "offer[ed] no new strategies..."

I gather The Speech was interrupted once, with fake applause.

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