Iraq War: Will Bush surprise us in his Tuesday speech?

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

I'll bet Bush uses the following in his speech Tuesday evening when he appeals for a mass of volunteers for the Army and Marines.  Via Juan Cole on his Informed Comment blog 06/28/05, I see this article from The Scotsman: Bush warns Blair he must boost UK forces by Brian Brady 06/26/05.

Britain is coming under sustained pressure from American military chiefs to keep thousands of troops in Iraq - while going ahead with plans to boost the front line against a return to "civil war" in Afghanistan.

Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.

Scotland on Sunday revealed last month that Blair is preparing to rush thousands more British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, amid warnings the coalition faces a "complete strategic failure" in the effort to rebuild the nation.

The grim prognosis was underlined last night by Afghanistan's defence minister, who warned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was regrouping and planned to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to the country.

Say what?  Iraq is on the brink of disaster?  Afghanistan sliding toward civil war?  Gosh, that's not what Rummy was saying on TV this past weekend.  He said things were going fine in Iraq if only the news media would report the good things.  And that Afghanistan was a model democracy (or something to that effect).

Man, I bet Bush fires Rummy for putting out such misinformation!  I'm sure Bush will level with the people in his Tuesday speech.  I bet he doesn't even smirk during it.

But despite fears that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating, the Americans have now launched a determined rearguard action to ensure Iraq does not suffer from a switch in Britain's military focus.

"The Prime Minister was given a pretty depressing run-down of the prognosis for Iraq while he was in Washington," one senior Ministry of Defence source said last night. "The Americans are pushing for at least a maintenance of the troop numbers we have there now. Our latest intention is to reduce by at least half the number of our troops in Iraq within a year.["]

Escalating in Afghanistan.  Trying to maintain current troop levels in Iraq.  Things going badly in both places.  Actually "brink of disaster" in Iraq and facing "complete strategic failure" in Afghanistan sound like things are going very badly.

Juan Cole comments:

The mystery to me is why the Americans think they need more British troops in southern Iraq. Most of that area has fallen into the hands of religious Shiite militias anyway, and I doubt the British get out of their barracks all that much. When they do, they appear to be angering a lot of the Shiites, as in Maysan, the provincial government of which yesterday launched a non-cooperation campaign against the British. Do the Americans want to move the British up to the hot zone in the Sunni heartland? Is the South more unstable than it looks on the outside (e.g. is the Mahdi Army reconstituting itself down there?)

Ironically, even as the Afghanistan venture appears on the verge of collapse, Dick Cheney instanced it in his Wolf Blitzer interview on Sunday as evidence of the undue pessimism of his critics and a reason to be optimistic about Iraq.

I'm glad Bush is going to finally have a frank talk with the American people about all this.