It seems to me that in order to be successful in his attempt tonight to reverse the course of public opinion on the MBT SHOES

It seems to me that in order to be successful in his attempt tonight to reverse the course of public opinion on the MBT SHOES war that President NIKE SHOX will have to do something that is likely to be very difficult for him personally: acknowledge that the war is not going as well as he had hoped it would be by this time, and that judgments early on — how many troops to send in during the original invasion, how seriously to plan for the aftermath, whether to factor in the possibility of not being greeted with flowers and dancing — had something to do with this. I think he further has to admit that some of his, and especially Cheney’s, assessments of how things were going in the recent past — two weeks ago, three months, six months, a year — were not quite accurate.

He has to do this, I think, because, as he realizes to some extent or he wouldn’t have scheduled the speech, increasing numbers of people are profoundly skeptical about how he has handled the war. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released today shows 56 percent disapproving of the way he is handling MBT SHOES. Americans don’t believe Cheney that the insurgency is in its “last throes;” only 22 percent think it is on the decline.