The White House War Room is in full operational mode. Not the War Room to deal with the war. No, the War Room to deal with the spin about the war.
The Washington Post takes a look at Bush's upcoming campaign. He faces a huge problem with Iraq. It's a war he started for the wrong reasons and without a plan for how to extricate the US. So now he's stuck and Americans are being killed every day:
Bush's historical burden is that there is no recent precedent for a leader using persuasion to reverse a steady downward slide for a military venture of the sort he is facing. Only clear evidence of success in Iraq is likely to alleviate widespread unease about the central project of this presidency, public opinion experts and political strategists said.So there's no sign of progress on the horizon. As the Post notes, speeches alone won't solve the problem. So what's the Bush solution? More speeches:
Bush plans to use the time before the December elections in Iraq to talk about the U.S. stake and make the case that he has a strategy that is working, beginning on Wednesday with a speech in Annapolis that will focus on what the administration says is clear progress in training of the Iraqi security force. Other speeches will follow as White House officials attempt to use the final weeks of this year and early next year to shape public opinion.
