BUSH ADDRESS PREVIEW

WaPo/Reuters has a preview of the address, which appears to be carefully timed to take place between NFL matchups. The purpose of the speech, however, is unclear, as it appears he is going to say nothing new:

President Bush will say in a speech to the nation on Sunday night that crushing a guerrilla campaign in Iraq will take time and require sacrifices, and he will vow to spend whatever is necessary for victory.

According to speech excerpts released by the White House, Bush also will say members of the United Nations “now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation.”

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“There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world,” he will say.

Bush will offer a stay-the-course commitment to Iraq, calling it part of the war on terrorism although no conclusive evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has been found and no substantive links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda have been established.

One also has to love the editorializing contained in what’s supposed to be a straight news story.

FILED UNDER: Iraq War, Terrorism, , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. flory says:

    Perhaps its a bit of overcompensation. 8 months of swallowing, and then regurgitating, Bush propaganda. Now, a little late, they’re making an attempt to point out how completely without basis all of it was.

  2. Mithras says:

    “no conclusive evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has been found and no substantive links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda have been established”

    One also has to love the editorializing contained in what’s supposed to be a straight news story.

    Those are facts, not opinion. It is not editorializing to include facts that are relevant to the topic in the story. Or is anything that doesn’t parrot the (Republican) Administration’s talking point now all “spin”?

  3. James Joyner says:

    Flory: The press have hardly been parotting the Bush party line on Iraq.

    Mithras: It is true that no WMD have been found (or at least reported), but that’s really irrelevant in terms of the GWOT. Whether evidence of Saddam-al Qaeda is “substantive” is indeed a matter of opinion–even though mine is that it’s not. Regardless, there are terrorist groups other than al Qaeda, so the war could be tied to GWOT either way.