But no one's buying it anymore. Even the Washington Post, which has twisted itself in pretzels trying to accommodate the Bush Vision into something approaching sense (and erroneously gives him the benefit of the doubt on connecting Iraq to 9/11 even here, even though Bush himself is ENTIRELY, not partially, the architect of turning Iraq into a central terrorist haven), has had just about enough of this:
PRESIDENT BUSH sought last night to bolster slipping public support for the war in Iraq by connecting it, once again, to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to the war against terrorism. That connection is not spurious, even if Saddam Hussein was not a collaborator of al Qaeda: Clearly Iraq is now a prime battlefield for Islamic extremists, and success or failure there will do much to determine the outcome of the larger struggle against them. But Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants, a transformation caused in part by his administration's many errors since Saddam Hussein's defeat more than two years ago. The president also didn't speak candidly enough about the primary mission the United States now has in Iraq, which is not "hunting down the terrorists" but constructing a stable government in spite of Iraq's sectarian divisions and violent resistance from the former ruling elite. It's harder to explain why Americans should die in such a complex and ambitious enterprise than in a fight with international terrorists, but that is the case Mr. Bush most needs to make.
[snip]
Once again, however, the president missed an opportunity to fully level with Americans, even though some of the hard truths he elided have been spelled out by his aides and senior military commanders. The insurgency, they have said, is not growing weaker; most likely, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, it will never be defeated by American troops, and it will continue for many more years. Iraqi troops probably will not be ready to take over from U.S. units for several years, at least. For now, the combined U.S.-Iraqi force is nowhere near large enough to hold territory taken from the insurgents or to secure the country's borders. Yet Army and Marine units are being pressed into their third tours of duty, even as recruitment of fresh soldiers at home lags badly.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.
People are willing to support this because they think that more time, more money, and more effort poured into this black hole will accomplish something -- and they still don't want to believe that this president is feeding American kids into a meatgrinder so that war profiteers at companies like Halliburton can have a big ol' barbecue with the resulting hamburgers -- and tens of billions of unaccountable taxpayer dollars as the reward. But avoiding the truth doesn't change it.
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