Not a 'Bullhorn Moment'

Nedra Pickler writes for the Associated Press: "Bush began with a two-minute tribute to the 'nearly 3,000' victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, but most of his 17-minute speech was devoted to justifying his foreign policy since that day. With his party's control of Congress at stake in elections less than two months away, Bush suggested that political opponents who are calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would be giving victory to the terrorists. . . .

"'The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had nothing to do with 9/11,' Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. 'There will be time to debate this president's policies in Iraq. September 11th is not that time.'"

Credibility Problems

Dan Balz and Michael Abramowitz write in The Washington Post that "this president's capacity to move the public is severely diminished. . . .

"Setbacks in Iraq have soured a majority of Americans on that mission. Falsely optimistic predictions of progress have undermined the administration's credibility. A majority of Americans question fundamental elements of the president's argument, including his contention that Iraq is the central front in the campaign against terrorism."

To enhance its credibility, the White House is turning to, of all people, the terrorists themselves. (See Wednesday's column .)

Balz and Abramowitz write that press secretary Tony Snow and presidential counselor Dan Bartlett have "singled out the effort to quote the terrorists' own words as a tactic they hope will break through to ordinary Americans who may not be aware of the terrorists' aims. 'We may be having a debate in this country about whether Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, but our enemies believe it is,' Bartlett said."

But the terrorists have even less credibility than the White House. And Americans seem increasingly aware that the main source of violence in Iraq is not from Islamic jihadists, but from sectarian strife.

Balz and Abramowitz also note: "Bush's speeches have been sprinkled with what critics regard as factually questionable assertions -- adding to what even some allies have described as a credibility problem for the White House."

For instance: "In discussing proposed new rules for trying terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison, Bush last week said flatly that 'the United States does not torture.' That may have been the White House interpretation, but the CIA has approved tactics -- 'water-boarding,' for example, in which interrogators simulate drowning -- that many military and international lawyers consider outside legal boundaries."

A Nixon Moment?

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "To Mr. Bush's admirers, this was the Texan president at his Reaganesque best: defining America's enemies broadly, vowing their defeat and promising to make the spread of freedom his legacy. To his critics, it was Mr. Bush at his most dangerous, approaching the world with little interest in how America is perceived and lumping together its many opponents, even if their agendas and interests are quite different."

Sanger notes Bush's historical allusions of choice -- then suggests his own.

The president "compared the situation now to those faced by Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II and Harry S. Truman at the dawn of the cold war. But it also had echoes of another era, of a time in 1970 when Richard M. Nixon was urging the country to unify behind a Vietnam War that was expanding into Cambodia.