A Change in Tactics, Not Strategy

So will the escalation really be conditional? Or is that just rhetoric? Bartlett offered no details, only insisting: "This is going to be different."

Bush as usual appears prepared to admit that mistakes were made -- but without necessarily taking blame or expressing contrition. (See yesterday's column, The Hardest Sell.)

Said Bartlett on CBS: "The president will say very clearly tonight that there were mistakes with the earlier operations, that it did not have enough Iraqi troops or U.S. troops, that the rules of engagement -- the terms in which our troops would actually conduct these operations -- were flawed."

Here's Bartlett on ABC with Diane Sawyer, who challenged him with a roll call of generals and Republicans opposed to sending more troops, and video clips of pessimistic soldiers. Bartlett stayed on message.

High-Stakes PR Blitz

Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev write for McClatchy Newspapers: "President Bush is about to take a gamble that could make or break his presidency and his place in history."

So what's the PR game plan? Hutcheson and Talev write: "The White House has sought to frame the Iraq debate as a choice between Bush's plan and abject failure."

US News reports: "Administration insiders tell the US News Political Bulletin that the White House public relations rollout for the 'new way forward' in Iraq is as aggressive as any PR campaign the administration has waged so far. The main reason is that Bush has concluded that his prime time speech tomorrow night will be a make-or-break moment not only for Iraq policy but for the remaining agenda of his presidency. 'He sees the urgency, and realizes he must persuade the country that he gets it,' says a Bush adviser. For much of the day, Administration officials will be briefing the news media about the speech, trying to shape tonight's coverage."

Maura Reynolds and Noam N. Levey write in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush spent hours Tuesday practicing in front of cameras, preparing to make his case for increasing the U.S. military commitment in Iraq in a prime-time address to the nation tonight. . . .

"Members of Congress who met with Bush said he appeared to understand that, after years of upbeat rhetoric and positive assessments that belied a lack of progress inside the country, his credibility was on the line."

War of Words

Johanna Neuman writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Is it a 'surge?' Is it an 'escalation?' Is it harmless semantics? Is it disingenuous spin? . . .

"What infuriates critics of the war, including many liberal Democrats, is that they see 'surge' as a manipulative and deceptive word. It implies a relatively short-term increase in the U.S. military commitment, they say, when the White House intends to keep the additional troops in Iraq much longer, perhaps for several years.

"Even worse, critics say, the news media have uncritically accepted the word and thus contributed to deceiving the public."

Jim Rutenberg writes in the New York Times: "This week has ushered in a new political battle over the language of the war: 'Surge,' meet 'escalation.'"

Paul Farhi writes in The Washington Post: "Should the news media adopt the terminology favored by policymakers when those words can be construed as politically loaded? . . .

"'Surge' falls into 'the Orwellian zone between language and politics,' says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which studies and evaluates the media. 'The president and his advisers would be remiss if they didn't come up with a term suited to their new policy. But journalists would be equally remiss if they just thoughtlessly repeated the term without pondering the policy and its implications.'"

Rutenberg, by the way, reports that Snow said last night that Bush himself will not use the word "surge".

How Many Troops?

The chief intellectual architect and cheerleader for sending more troops to Iraq is Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute.

And it is worth noting for the record that he has made it crystal clear in the past that 20,000 troops would not be nearly enough. (He also thinks they should remain in country for a long time, and he doesn't like the term "surge".)

Here's Kagan and Gen. Jack Keane in a Washington Post op-ed just two weeks ago: "We need to cut through the confusion. Bringing security to Baghdad--the essential precondition for political compromise, national reconciliation and economic development--is possible only with a surge of at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so. Any other option is likely to fail."

Here's Kagan talking to NPR's Bob Garfield three weeks ago:

"FREDERICK KAGAN: The media has been using the term 'surge' very loosely. And I think that's actually a bit of a problem, because there have been various ideas floated for very short-term troops surges of relatively small numbers of troops. And I think that that would be a big mistake, and it's not what we're calling for.

"We're actually calling for an increase of troop strength in Iraq of about 35,000 combat troops; 20,000 of those would go into Baghdad. So I think a part of the problem that we have is that people are not being sufficiently precise about which proposal they're discussing when they talk in terms of a troop surge."

Opinion Watch

The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes : "The notion that the 'surge' in U.S. troops under discussion -- about 20,000 combat troops on top of the 132,000 already in Iraq -- amounts to a new policy is laughable. Adding troops is a tactic, a means toward an end, not a serious strategy -- except maybe in the Washington reality in which politicians on both sides of the debate benefit from pretending that a short-term number is a question for the ages.

"It allows Bush to pretend he is taking bold action to alter the course of a deteriorating war. And it allows Democrats to oppose something concrete and possibly to atone for their original support for the war without having to risk their political fortunes by calling for a complete withdrawal.

"The commander in chief needs to set aside his wearisome spin. . . .

"The president needs to articulate the conditions under which the U.S. will pull out altogether, in the near future. As painful as that would be, it sure beats becoming embroiled in someone else's civil war."

Harold Meyerson writes in his Washington Post op-ed column that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush and his political guru, Karl Rove, all "firmly believe that the successful politician must above all cultivate his base -- not that any of them can point to recent successes. . . .

"For Maliki to cordon off Sadr City is a little like Bush blockading Southern Baptist churches, or surrounding the headquarters of the National Rifle Association and telling everyone to come out with hands up. Bush expects Maliki to turn against his own -- a gambit nowhere to be found in Bush and Rove's own political playbook. . . .

"Yet tonight, President Bush will announce that Maliki has changed."

David Ignatius writes in his Washington Post opinion column on "the real danger of a troop surge: It sets up a showdown between the president and his critics that could shred the chances for a stable, sustainable policy that might embody some of the military lessons we have finally learned."

Tariq al-Hashimi, the Iraqi vice president, writes in a Washington Post op-ed that "all is not lost" in Iraq. But the best evidence he comes up with is widespread support within his country for the national soccer team.

'Mission Accomplished' Redux

Press secretary Tony Snow's latest attempt to revise history:

"Q Tony, this goes to your previous acknowledgment that the President is aware of public anxiety about the situation in Iraq. What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the President stand under a 'Mission Accomplished' banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, the Vice President talking about the 'last throes' -- how should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?

"MR. SNOW: I think the public ought to just listen to what the President has to say. You know that the 'Mission Accomplished' banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln. And the President, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn't he? He said it was the end of major combat operations, but he did not say it was the end of operations. Instead, he cautioned people at the time that there would be considerable continued violence in Iraq, and that there would be continued operations for a long period of time. That single episode has been more widely mischaracterized than just about any aspect of the war."

But Bush was pretty blunt in his May 1, 2003 address: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

And as I most recently recounted in my October 5 column, the White House's fingerprints were all over that sign.

At an October 28, 2003 press conference, Bush initially claimed his staff was not responsible for the banner on the ship. "The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," he said. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way."

But as Dana Milbank and Mike Allen wrote in the next day's Washington Post: "White House press secretary Scott McClellan later acknowledged that the sign was produced by the White House. He said the warship's crew, at sea for 10 months, had requested it."

And Al Kamen wrote in October with more evidence that it was the White House's idea, from Bob Woodward's book 'State of Denial.' "None other than Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on the record, tells Woodward that 'I took "Mission Accomplished" out' upon reading a draft of the speech. 'And I fixed it and sent it back. They fixed the speech,' he said, 'but not the sign.'"

Judicial Watch

Neil A. Lewis writes in the New York Times: "In an apparent effort to lower the temperature in the fierce battle over federal judges -- and in a concession to political reality -- President Bush said Tuesday that he was dropping plans to nominate three of his choices for the federal appeals courts who have been vigorously opposed by Senate Democrats. . . .

"Days after the November election that gave the Democrats control of Congress, Mr. Bush pledged to renominate the three. His words prompted denunciations from Democrats that he had not taken any lessons from the election and that he was not, as he had claimed, prepared to engage them in a bipartisan way."

R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post: "Signaling at the same time that President Bush is committed to placing more conservatives on the bench, the White House renominated32 other federal judicial candidates that the previous Senate did not confirm."

Scooter Libby Watch

The Associated Press reports: "A federal judge said Tuesday he would not make available daily audio recordings of the upcoming trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on Bush's Iraq adventure; Stuart Carlson and Jim Morin on the surge; Steve Benson on comparative Bushisms; and John Sherffius on the new way forward.