Dan Froomkin's column today reviews Bush's recent speeches which trash opponents of his Iraq policy (which, everyone but Bush seems to know includes the majority of his constituents). The column includes the quote from Bush that the attacks are "baseless" and endanger our troops. With that, Froomkin eviscerates the Bush arguments:
But Bush's argument is deeply flawed. Far from being baseless, the charge that he intentionally misled the public in the run-up to war is built on a growing amount of evidence. And the longer Bush goes without refuting that evidence in detail, the more persuasive it becomes.Froomkin also lays out what we can expect from Bush. You can actually see Bush slipping back into that campaign mode of his -- from the days before he had his mandate:
And his most prized talking point -- that many Democrats agreed with him at the time -- is problematic. Many of those Democrats did so because they believed the information the president gave them. Now they are coming to the conclusion that they shouldn't have.
Like other Bush campaigns, this one will inevitably feature the ceaseless repetition of key sound bytes -- the hope being that they will be carried, largely unchallenged, by the media -- and virulent attacks by the White House on those who dare to disagree, even going so far as to question their patriotism.Bush can only succeed if the media does just regurgitate what he tells them. The White House press corps should save this column and refer to it frequently. Having been such patsies for Bush and Rove, they owe us some real reporting now.
In just those three paragraphs, Dan Froomkin explains the problems with the Bush Iraq strategy more clearly than almost anyone else has.
