President Bush on Iraq.

This is from the Duluth news tribune today.
Bush offers more realistic view of war
BY PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON POST
ANALYSIS
WASHINGTON - The last time President Bush delivered a prime-time address from the Oval Office was the night he launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, back when he expected a decisive victory and gratitude from a liberated people. Thirty-three months and more than 2,100 U.S. fatalities later, Bush on Sunday was still predicting victory -- but sounding a more subdued note.
As he stared again into the cameras from behind the 125-year-old presidential desk named Resolute, Bush this time found himself arguing with those who "conclude that the war is lost." The president back on national television was, by many accounts, one chastened by the travails on the battlefield abroad and the political freefall at home since the first Special Forces crossed into the Iraqi desert.
"This work has been especially difficult in Iraq, more difficult than we expected," Bush acknowledged. "Reconstruction efforts and the training of Iraqi security forces started more slowly than we hoped. We continue to see violence and suffering, caused by an enemy that is determined and brutal, unconstrained by conscience or the rules of war."
For a president traditionally resistant to acknowledging any miscues, such a concession amounts to a stark political change of course. As more of the country abandons him on Iraq, Bush has embarked on a campaign to bring it back into the fold with a more realistic assessment of mistakes and of challenges ahead. Sunday night's national address from the Oval Office ended a weeks-long series of speeches imploring the American people to stand behind him again, to swallow their skepticism and be optimistic about last week's Iraqi election, to believe a greater good will come from all the sacrifice.
He addressed opponents of the war in a far more direct and less-confrontational manner, acknowledging "this war is controversial" and offering respect to those who disagree with his policies. "I have heard your disagreement and I know how deeply it is felt," he said. He added, "We will continue to listen to honest criticism and make every change that will help us complete the mission." He drew a distinction "between honest critics who recognize what is wrong and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right."
The fresh approach played out over the past few weeks has yielded benefits in some quarters in Washington and may have helped fuel a modest uptick in Bush's sagging poll ratings. "He's taken a step back, he's looked at his hole card," Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., who met with Bush last week, said in an interview before the speech. "He's grown as a leader."
It might be too late to win back many who have lost faith. "When you tell a soldier to go take that hill, you come up with your mission and you tell them what you need to do to accomplish that mission, and you need to tell them clearly when that mission is ended," Army Maj. Tammy Duckworth, who was disabled in Iraq and plans to run for Congress as a Democrat, said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "Those decisions should have been made before we even sent troops over there. And they weren't -- they were not doing that."
While many opposed Bush even as he began the war, the political climate has changed so drastically since then that the president's whole approach to the struggle against terrorism has come under fire. Congressional critics have questioned secret overseas CIA prisons, moved to bar cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners, blocked for the moment reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act that empowered law enforcement agencies and now threaten to hold hearings into Bush's order authorizing surveillance of Americans without warrants.
Just hours before Sunday night's presidential speech, a key Senate Republican challenged Bush's surveillance program and suggested it may be illegal. "We can't become an outcome-based democracy," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process because that's what a democracy is all about."
If Bush and his team are giving critics some due on Iraq, they remain defiant on the domestic spying program.
"What I'm concerned about... is that as we get farther and farther from 9/11... we seem to have people less and less committed to doing everything that's necessary to defend the country," Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC's "Nightline" during Sunday's trip to Iraq. "Somehow I think a lot of people have lost their sense of urgency out there. That's hard for me to do or for the president to do."