OK, so I caught the speech. It was, at least in terms of quality of writing and delivery, one of Bush’s better speeches. (Text of the speech is he re.)
There was one comment in the speech that I feel compelled to write about:
I am often asked why we are in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the Nine-Eleven attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My Administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat - and after Nine-Eleven, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.
That isn’t a bad answer, actually, and I am willing to believe that the administration believes that Saddam was a clear threat. However, the speech would have been far more persuasive if there had been some actual discussion about how he was a threat….and if that information were accurate, or at least close to what reasonable people believe to be reality.
Back at the start of the Iraq war, I know that, while I was frustrated at the PR campaign using 9/11 as part of the justification for invasion, I was willing to accept the concept of preemption if there was an imminent threat (a point that my lib friends would disagree on, but I suspect centrists would concur with me).
However, everything I’ve heard since then suggests that the imminent threat was, at best, bad interpretation of bad intel.
OK, I lied…one more snippet that I need to rant at:
Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone.
Here is a point where I’m going to disagree with both the President and folks on the left. I agree with the “Powell Doctrine” of “you break it; you bought it”, and the implied obligation that we ought to fix what we’ve broken before we leave. However, although there do seem to have been improvements, in many cases we seem to be less-than-effective when it comes to “fixing” Iraq.
I would be somewhat less pissed with the administration if there were an acknowledgement of that ineffectiveness, and indications about what is going to be done differently to solve that problem, so that we can get out and not leave a vacuum or a civil war behind.