President Bush at the UN today

"It wasn't a bad speech. It could have been so much better."

I mean--Burma? Myanmar? A laundry list of support for UN initiatives? Today? Right after Ahmadinejad at Columbia?

Captain Ed: "The UN does not need a State of the Global Union address -- it needs blunt, honest truths about its shortcomings and the necessary steps to bring prosperity and freedom to the entire world." Amen.

The President's speech

President Bush's theme tonight in his speech---the more success we have, the faster troops will come hom. I liked this too: ""Some say the gains we are making in Iraq come too late. They are mistaken. It is never too late to deal a blow to al-Qaida. It is never too late to advance freedom. And it is never too late to support our troops in a fight they can win...Whatever political party you belong to, whatever your position on Iraq, we should be able to agree that America has a vital interest in preventing chaos and providing hope in the Middle East," the president said.

Good stuff. Republicans need to be aware, however---with the president's poll numbers having been down this long, with (unfortunately) public opinion having hardened on the president and Iraq (regrettably helped along by the negative spin put on everything to do with Iraq by some Democrats and those in the media), President Bush would be doing very well if his approval ratings by January 2009 got up to, say, 45%.

Bush wants to reduce troops in Iraq; Democrats just say no

So President Bush tonight will announce a troop drawdown in Iraq, by next year, of some 5,700 troops. Interesting--recently, a Democratic Party political strategist predicted Bush's move and said Democrats should simply "take yes for an answer" to it. Quote: "The Democratic strategist takes my notebook again and writes out the statement he would like to issue after Bush announces that he intends to begin withdrawing U.S. troops: "This is an important and historic step away from the status quo of more troops, more money, more time and more of the same. It is however the first step, and only the first step." That's the smart Democratic strategy, he argues, to take credit for altering the course of the war."

But right now it appears Democrats will just say no. And, perhaps (yet again) begin to move away from the mainstream.

President Bush is in Iraq...

...right now. He's meeting with General Petraeus and other American officials there, along with Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. They're meeting at an airbase in Anbar province, a place that was very dangerous and insurgent-infested a year ago, but security is much improved now. Indeed that's why the administration chose it, as a symbol of the improvements we've seen in Iraq.

Bush administration officials claim the meeting was necessary prior to the September 15th deadline for deciding what will come next in Iraq--that the president needed to "look Petraeus in the eye" and get the real scoop on Iraq. Well, maybe--but I suspect there were a lot of politics behind this trip as well. It allows President Bush to show the American people that he's not afraid, or above, traveling to Iraq and being with his soldiers. And that he 's willing to do it on a holiday--in this case, on Labor Day. Remember the surprise visit he made at Thanksgiving 2003? That trip gave him a boost in the polls. The administration wouldn't mind seeing that happen again. Bush also surely wants to give the impression that no final decision has been made, that it is truly seeking input from Gen. Petraeus and the military as a whole.

Who knows? It might work. I give President Bush credit for going to Iraq. It's important for the commander-in-chief to go out to the field and see his troops.

No more Vietnams

President Bush today in a speech, using historical parallels to explain why we must stay in Iraq:
"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left," Bush said. "Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.'"

Indeed. In fact, in 2001 the Orange County Register investigated the aftermath of the war in Vietnam (some details here) and found that after 1975, over 1 million Vietnamese were held without charge in supposed "re-education" camps, and an estimated 165,000 of them died. That can't happen again.

"The Imperiled Presidency Inside the Bunker"...

Yes, folks, the above is a news headline above what sorta kinda purports to be a news story, on the front page of the Washington Post. Talk about loaded!