It ain't working, Mr. President.

And around we go....

I gotta say this 12/14/05 speech was my favorite. Plenty of the same old tired spin. However, there was some new stuff. Someone must have whispered into Bush's ear that it may be time to admit that it didn't go exactly as planned. I suppose it's refreshing to know that the guy is at least open to the idea of embracing reality.

A line from the speech that the FEARBUSH crowd no doubt enjoyed:
"One of the blessings of our free society is that we can debate these issues openly, even in a time of war. Most of the debate has been a credit to our democracy, but some have launched irresponsible charges. They say that we act because of oil, that we act in Iraq because of Israel, or because we misled the American people."

Well Im not sure if the syntax of that is exactly correct. I'm sure he meant because we misled the American people we were able to act . Whatever. It was a shot taken at 57% of the American people.

This was Bush's 4th speech in a row to try to gain support for the war. Perhaps he'd still be making these speeches if his poll numbers weren't in the toilet, perhaps not. Is it working though? Do the strategists in the White House really expect to change the minds of 57% of us? Is it even possible?

Well I don't think so. I think most people have made up their minds on this one. Barring the discovery of 500 tons of WMD's, I'd say the numbers aren't going to move much regardless of how many big speeches are on the calendar. Why? My guess is the Downing Street Memo. Sure, lots of other evidence of the administration's intentions of deception exist, but this wraps it up nicely. And so far, they haven't really provided an adequate explanation for any of it.

You see, you can spin lots of things. You can spin the "central front", and "democracy defeats hateful ideology" . You can spin the "faulty intelligence". But it's pretty hard to spin a British document that so categorically flies in the face of all that. You can't hope to turn the opinion of this war around without addressing this issue, if not the memo itself. Bush just keeps spewing the same catchphrases that sound good as soundbites, hoping people won't stop to really think about it.

The way I look at it, the only thing Bush can defend himself with in this whole thing is his own doctrine of preemptive invasion. The "if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long" doctrine. Shockingly, very little debate has happened publicly on this. It really deserves a serious and objective look at the massive implications of this policy. Of course, that would have been more appropriate 3 years ago, when our nation's mood was changed by 19 hijackers. With all of our good intentions and flag waving, we appear to have given this president the green light to embark on a military crusade. After all, if we use Iraq as a model for this doctrine, it means that the US can pretty much invade whoever we please. All you need to do is hype a "threat". One could debate for months the very meaning of the word that Bush flings around so loosely.

Posted by ChenZhen at December 15, 2005 01:35 AM