Presidential Address

Some fascinating moments in tonight's speech, huh?

I actually thought, at the beginning, that he did a good job of taking the blame. It's the first time that he's seemed to openly acknowledge that which everyone else was saying, but that the White House jettisoned with false bravado.

Most interesting to me was this:

Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.

Wow. Pretty bold of him to bring up "Mission Accomplished" willingly.

So, acknowledgment is bold and a very visible change for this president. That being said, there are two things that are baffling about this, "I admit that we've been failing in Iraq, so what we're going to do about it is send more people over to keep doing what we are doing, only this time we're going to hope really hard that it works this time."

1. Do they really believe the American people are going to buy this?
2. Do they really believe that it is going to work?

UPDATE: Barak Obama, just now: "I don't doubt the President's sincerity that he believes this is the best course. I simply think the President is wrong."

Also, what possible good does it do to threaten military action against Iran in an address like this? The President just admitted that we need more people enlisted in the armed forces, so doesn't that render a military threat in the same speech moot?

UPDATE II: Incidentally, I have, officially, become a MSNBC person instead of a CNN person. If you'd told me that 12 months ago, I'd have laughed at you. But, Keith, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert and Brian Williams blow Blitzer, Cooper and Jeffrey Jewberg off the screen. Plus, the MSNBC boys all seem to hate each other - Williams because he's real newsman, so fuck the rest of em; Matthews because who the fuck does this Olbermann guy think he is, anyway?; Russert because he's slowly getting squeezed out by the other three; Olberman because he's the scrappy new kid on the block (like Anderson Cooper wishes he was). It makes for great television.