Bush's Simplistic Vision

James Gerstenzang writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush said Thursday that the yearlong increased U.S. troop deployment in Iraq had allowed the country to 'restart political and economic life' and take on a greater role in its own reconstruction while building a modern democracy on 'the rubble of three decades of tyranny.'"

Oh really? "Steven A. Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview that although the examples of progress Bush cited were accurate, the new Iraqi laws the president cited either 'fall short or there are loopholes.'

"And, citing new fighting across the country as an 'unraveling of the security situation,' he said it was 'tough to talk about progress one day after 100 people were killed in the worst violence in months.'

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a written statement that Bush had 'failed to give the American people a clear indication' that a plan for success was any closer now than in the last five years.

"'The president asserts that real progress has been made in Iraq, but if that were truly the case, then our troops would be coming home soon,' he said."

Bush today, in a joint press availability with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, continued to insist that the targets of the government offensive were "criminal elements." He even called it "a defining moment in the history of Iraq." And he said that although the Iraqis were in the lead, "the U.S. will of course provide them help if they ask for it, if they need it."

Yesterday's Speech

Bush's lengthy speech yesterday failed to win him the headlines he likely was hoping for today. But it also escaped some much-needed journalistic scrutiny.

Here, for instance, Bush was rewriting history: "Tragically, the progress threatened to unravel in 2006. The new government Iraqis elected took months to form. In the meantime, a terrorist attack on a Shia shrine in Samarra drove sectarian tensions past the breaking point. Sunni extremists, including al Qaeda terrorists, and Shia extremists, some backed by Iran, slaughtered innocent Iraqis in brutal attacks and reprisal killings. And across the country, political and economic activity was set back.

"We took a hard look at the situation, and responded with the surge."

In fact, as Mark Seibel of McClatchy Newspapers wrote last January: "Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing . . . underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict's root causes." Thomas E. Ricks of The Washington Post wrote last March: "Experts say the attack did not begin a civil war but rather confirmed the ongoing deterioration and violence in Iraq -- conditions the White House and the generals had resisted recognizing."

Furthermore, it wasn't until almost a year after the shrine bombing -- and several months after the 2006 election -- that Bush announced the surge.

Bush also asserted yesterday that "this much is clear: The surge is doing what it was designed to do." But that's not even vaguely true compared to what he actually said the surge would accomplish when he announced it. (See, for instance, my April 26, 2007 column.)