Is anybody listening to the car salesman tonite?

June 28, 2005
Bush and Aides Seek to Calm Public's Concerns About Iraq
By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, June 28 - The Bush administration pressed on today with high-profile efforts to reassure Americans that political progress is being made in Iraq despite the unrelenting violence there and that it has specific plans to ensure military victory.

Recent opinion polls have exposed a mounting restiveness among Americans over the wisdom and prosecution of the war in Iraq, and administration officials have been seeking to address those concerns in a series of public appearances.

President Bush himself is to deliver a televised address on the war at 8 p.m. Eastern time today. In excerpts from his prepared text, the president appears to be responding to calls for greater administration candor about setbacks in Iraq.

"The work in Iraq is difficult and dangerous," he said in the advance excerpts. "Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying and the suffering is real."'

Mr. Bush said that he knew Americans were wondering whether the sacrifices in Iraq were worth the costs, and he offered this response: "It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country."
Comment: It's worth it because nobody in this administration have lost any loved one in Iraq.

Referring to the Qaeda leaders Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, the president said that insurgents would succeed only '"if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi" and "if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden."
Comment: Why is bin Laden still running lose?

Earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, foreshadowing the president's speech, said on the NBC "Today" morning show that the graphic daily images of insurgent attacks were distracting Americans from "the quiet process that is going on in Iraq of building political consensus toward a stable and democratic Iraq."
Comment: It's a distraction for who?

She said that Mr. Bush would urge patience, telling Americans "again why it is important that we finish the job in Iraq."

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said that the speech would chart no new policy course.

For his first major speech on the war in months, the president has chosen a military setting, Fort Bragg, N.C., where he will also meet with the families of 33 soldiers killed in action. Ahead of the speech, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis, several senior officials have offered vigorous defenses of the war while also cautioning that the insurgency could persevere for years.

Recent polls describe some of the lowest levels of support yet for the planning and conduct of the war, and rising doubts that - administration assurances notwithstanding - a corner has been turned.

A new Washington Post-ABC News survey found growing skepticism that the war was going well or that the insurgency might be, as Vice President Dick Cheney recently said, in its "last throes." Barely 1 in 5 of those surveyed said they believed the insurgency was weakening.