America Is Not Buying bush Speech

Tuesday evening, CNN ran a report on new poll numbers from CBS that show the American public was unmoved on Iraq by the testimony of Gen. David Betrayus and bushy’s speech.

The National Journal writes that Bush’s spin is “falling on deaf ears.” A key takeaway: Before the administration’s PR offensive, 35 percent of Americans felt the troop increase was making the Iraq situation better. After the speeches and testimony, the number dropped — only 31 percent felt the escalation was working.

bushy’s top military and diplomatic advisers in Iraq -- Gen. David Betrayus and Ambassador Ryan (Crock of shit) Crocker -- came to Washington last week to plead the case that the troop surge is working and that, if the military is given more time to build on the progress, victory is still achievable. The American public, it seems, did not buy the administration's message. A new CBS News poll demonstrates that Americans remain skeptical of the way the war is being waged.

In the survey, 57 percent of respondents claimed to pay at least some attention to betrayus' testimony before Congress. Considerably fewer (29 percent) said they watched the president's televised speech on Thursday, in which he announced plans to withdraw 30,000 troops by next summer. A possible explanation for their tuning out: About two-thirds said the president tries to make the situation in Iraq sound better than it truly is.

Respondents were unconvinced by betrayus’' argument that the troop surge is improving conditions in Iraq. The number of those in a half-sample who said the surge is making no impact or is making things worse shot up 5 points from early September. Of those who said that things are getting better thanks to the surge, a 47-percent plurality acknowledged that they believe the improvements will only last as long as the extra troops are in place.

The administration claims that the troop surge is designed to buy time for political reconciliation.
However, a majority of respondents seem to believe that this effort is ultimately failing. Sixty-nine percent said that the Iraqi government is not doing all that it can to bring stability to the country, and 53 percent said Iraq will never become a stable democracy. Those numbers are unchanged from the pre-report survey.

-->The betrayus report and bushy's speech did not change the overall assessment of how things are going in Iraq in general; 63 percent still report that things are going badly, down only 1 point from early September.

Meanwhile, reaction to bushy’s plan to reduce the number of troops to pre-surge levels by summer 2008 (contingent upon conditions on the ground) split sharply along party lines. About seven in 10 Democrats said that bush should remove more troops than he proposed, while about half of republicans maintained that returning to pre-surge levels is the right amount.