Editorial: Bush fails to deliver

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 | 8:46 a.m.

On Monday President Bush sought to reverse the erosion of public support for his policies in Iraq with a speech that, his advisers said in advance, would outline his strategy for U.S. success there. Bush, in a prime-time address at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, said the five steps in the strategy were turning over sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, helping to establish security, rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, getting more international support and establishing national elections. But aside from the symbolic gesture of calling for the demolition of the Abu Ghraib prison -- the site of the scandal where Iraqi detainees were abused by U.S. soldiers -- there wasn't anything new in the president's speech. Indeed, what was in the address wasn't much different than what can be found in the president's standard campaign stump speech.

The most important question is whether the president's strategy for Iraq will work. Unfortunately, the administration's bungling of the war, and its failure to get enough international support early on to secure and rebuild that country, doesn't inspire much confidence today. It's unclear that the White House really has learned from its mistakes and truly understands how important it is to listen to Congress, many of whose members on both sides of the aisle have been trying to offer constructive criticism to the administration. A growing number of Republican senators, in particular, are getting nervous, a situation that has accelerated following the scandal involving the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

On Monday the president used lofty language on why we need to continue our military efforts and rebuild Iraq, but it will take much more than rhetoric to finish the war, a conflict where the American death toll has almost reached 800. If the president's goal was to reassure the American public, by offering a real strategy of where we're headed in Iraq, he failed.