Bush seeks an exit strategy as war threatens his career

[BurtWorm]

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1037015,00.html

The President will make a dramatic U-turn on Iraq in a TV broadcast tonight to try to salvage his hopes of re-election amid Americans' growing hostility to the casualties and chaos. Report by Paul Harris in New York, Jason Burke and Gaby Hinsliff

Sunday September 7, 2003
The Observer

George Bush will attempt tonight to convince the American people that he has a workable 'exit strategy' to free his forces from the rapidly souring conflict in Iraq, as Britain prepares to send in thousands more troops to reinforce the faltering coalition effort.
Frantic negotiations continued this weekend in New York to secure a United Nations resolution that would open the way for other countries to deploy peacekeeping troops to help after Bush - with one eye on next year's presidential election - signalled a change of heart on America's refusal to allow any but coalition forces into Iraq.

The President has been left with little practical choice. Concern among the American public has reached such a pitch that, with his approval ratings plummeting, he will deliver a televised address to the nation tonight to reassure them that they do not face another Vietnam. With their sons and daughters dying daily in guerrilla attacks, Americans may now be becoming more frightened of being bogged down in a hostile country than of the terrorist threat against which Bush has pledged to defend them.


...

A classified report drawn up by the US US Joint Chiefs of Staff and leaked last week blamed hurried and inadequate planning for the crisis, with too great a focus on an invasion and not enough on organising the peace. As the leading dove, Powell's stock is now rising in the White House, while that of the President's hawkish National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is judged to be falling.

'Condi Rice is in trouble,' said one Whitehall source.


...

[Paschall]

1. Not that it's any news to anyone

But there really is something pathological about Shrub having hitched his star to Saddam Hussein.

Everyone Shrub will be panhandling for help realizes this fiasco could be the end of his political career. I'm not sure many of them feel he deserves an extra inning. Ya can't call in favors when ya ain't done none for anybody.

[PeakOil2008]

2. Good. Let the f*cker fall flat on his face.

No one should buy any of this. He's done nothing for no one but the top 1% of the moneyed elite. Millions are out of work and sans health care. Who gives a damn about saving Bush's legacy? Let it be one of shame and disgrace. It's all he's brought upon America.

[JackDragna]

3. This isn't just Rice's fault.

This is the systemic breakdown of the federal government at the executive level. People acted to either make themselves rich, further their political careers or simply bought idiotic propaganda and were led by the nose into a stupid war.

If Bush thinks he can save face by pretending to be a good guy and get us out of Iraq, more power to him. He has created the exact kind of instability that all his detractors said would come after an invasion. I sure hope someone makes the man and his supporters answer some tough questions about how the international community, military officials, experts in the Middle East and so on could have had what was going to happen pegged and why the executive branch was so keen on being willfully ignorant.

[sweetheart]

4. iraqi tar baby

sadly this man is focused on his career, while other people who are being killed are focused on more immediate concerns... what an ass.

I was thinking of ordering a body bag on-line and having it shipped to the white house for the body that REALLY should be in it.

[Rocinante]

5. You mean of course

poor little Barney after he was dropped on his head.