Things are slipping away.
He doesn’t have any clout.
So what can he do?
Give a speech at the Naval
War College to try to scare the crap out of everyone. After all, if he doesn’t
have terror he’s got nothing. Cue desperation.
Facing eroding support for his Iraq policy, even among Republicans, President
Bush on Thursday called al Qaida "the main enemy" in Iraq, an assertion
rejected by his administration’s senior intelligence analysts.The reference, in a major speech at the Naval War College that referred to
al Qaida at least 27 times, seemed calculated to use lingering outrage over
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to bolster support for the current
buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, despite evidence that sending more troops
hasn’t reduced the violence or sped Iraqi government action on key issues.Bush called al Qaida in Iraq the perpetrator of the worst violence racking
that country and said it was the same group that had carried out the Sept.
11 attacks in New York and Washington."Al Qaida is the main enemy for Shia, Sunni and Kurds alike," Bush
asserted. "Al Qaida’s responsible for the most sensational killings in
Iraq. They’re responsible for the sensational killings on U.S. soil."U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, say that Iraqis with ties
to al Qaida are only a small fraction of the threat to American troops. The
group known as al Qaida in Iraq didn’t exist before the U.S.-led invasion
in 2003, didn’t pledge its loyalty to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden until
October 2004 and isn’t controlled by bin Laden or his top aides. … ..
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