Al Qaeda's Best Publicist

"Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, is to report by Sept. 15 on Iraq's progress. In the meantime, the Bush administration will try to convince wavering Republicans, world leaders and other groups that winning the war is possible. . . .

"White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush will talk 'a fair amount' about Iraq in the weeks ahead, 'because it's important the American people get a fuller and deeper appreciation of what's going on.'

"Snow said other salesmen would include 'the people who are closest to the fighting,' such as Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Petraeus and Crocker have briefed about 200 members of Congress on the war."

See yesterday's column, Bush Can't Make the Sale.

Not Exactly Responsive

Bush deserves some credit for acknowledging some of the criticisms that have been leveled against the White House position on Iraq. Typically Bush has either ignored or badly mischaracterized his critics. Yesterday, however, Bush did a creditable job of describing some of the charges against him.

For instance, Bush said: "Some say that Iraq is not part of the broader war on terror. They complain when I say that the al-Qaeda terrorists we face in Iraq are part of the same enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. They claim that the organization called al-Qaeda in Iraq is an Iraqi phenomenon, that it's independent of Osama bin Laden and that it's not interested in attacking America."

But his rebuttals were sometimes not really responsive. Case in point:

"Some note that al Qaida in Iraq did not exist until the U.S. invasion -- and argue that it is a problem of our own making. The argument follows the flawed logic that terrorism is caused by American actions. Iraq is not the reason that the terrorists are at war with us. We were not in Iraq when the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. We were not in Iraq when they attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We were not in Iraq when they attacked the USS Cole in 2000. And we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001."

But critics are not saying that terrorism is America's fault, nor that the invasion of Iraq caused 9/11. They're saying that the way America fights terror matters. Good strategy can minimize terrorism; bad strategy can play right into the terrorist's hands.

About That Audience

Kenneth R. Bazinet writes for the New York Daily News: "Trying again to wrest control of the Iraq war debate from the Democrats, President Bush used a friendly military audience yesterday to repeat claims of a link between the 9/11 attacks and insurgents in Iraq. . . .

"Observers have noted that Bush seeks out military audiences the way President Richard Nixon traveled abroad to escape fallout from the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal.

"'He spends almost all his time speaking in front of friendly audiences, and there is no more friendly an audience for George Bush than the military,' said Hunter College political scientist Andrew Polski."