BUSH: We Can Still Win in Iraq

Trust me, I'm your president.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Rep. Roy Blunt (R, MO). I blogged about it. During the course of the phone call, Blunt made these comments:Blunt-I was at white house today, the military gets up to a position of acceptable performance quicker than politicians. Takes a while to get to democracy. Iraqs have to realize they have to perform. This july report, all news no benchmarks met, the report will say in half of the bench marks they have made satisfactory progress.


Today, Bush spoke about the July report and said we can still win in Iraq.

The report found the Baghdad government had made satisfactory progress towards only eight of 18 benchmarks on political, security and military goals, set by the US Congress. Progress has been "satisfactory" on another eight benchmarks with uncertain results on two more.

A senior US official, on condition of anonymity styled the interim report as merely a snapshot of the early stages of the operation announced in January.

"The report came out as you would expect an interim report to come out, with security indicators leading and political lagging behind," the official said.

"That's what you would expect because the strategy was designed to bring security first so that political accommodation could come later."

OK, let's make sure everybody is reading from the same page and singing the same song.

Colin Powell spoke of the Pottery Barn Rule, "you break it, you buy it". We broke Iraq. Now we are giving them benchmarks to fix their country? That we broke?

Hit the link to Andrew Sullivan on the right side of the page and read his take on Bush's press conference.