It's All About Perspective

President Bush wrapped up his fourth speech defending US action in Iraq before a group of foreign policy scholars at the Woodrow Wilson Center. In the speech he remarked the elections in Iraq would be the watershed moment of the Iraqi action and would

inspire democracy across the Middle East.

In the same speech he acknowledged that we now know that much of the intelligence prior to the war was flawed.

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As president I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. And I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that."

There is nothing new here, Bush acknowledged this before. What is interesting is the take be headline writers so far:

Yahoo News: Bush Defends Decision to Go to War in Iraq (Fair)

MSNBC: Bush acknowledges faulty Iraq intelligence
In speech, says war was still justified to oust Saddam, create democracy (?)

CNN: Bush: 'I am responsible' (Excuse me? No agenda here, huh)

Fox News: 'Story of Freedom' (Agenda on the other side of the aisle)


It is interesting to note the wide take on what he said. Bush did not take responsibility for the faulty intelligence - it wasn't his fault. He did own up to the decision going into Iraq as his alone. This is not new news, but it is significant that the President is finally showing some backbone. The AP acknowledges that it is apparently working. They dug up some analyst named Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion analyst from the American Enterprise Institute, who said:

"The erosion (of support) has clearly stopped, And I think that's more because the administration has decided to fight back."