Say What?

Bush's speech was a sad, demoralizing spectacle.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005, at 2:23 PM PT

President Bush's speech this morning, billed as a major statement about Iraq and the war on terror, was a sad spectacle—so ripe with lofty principles, so bereft of ideas on what to do with them. He approached the podium amid growing disapproval of his performance as a war president, ratcheting chaos and violence in Iraq, continuing terrorist attacks worldwide—and pleaded for nothing more than staying the course, with no turns or shifts, for a long, long time to come.