Bush speaks, Blair explains
George Bush's speech yesterday is unlikely to turn around any critics, but I fear it may also fail to energise potential allies, even those who share his visions. At this stage, there is a glum feeling about Iraq, exemplified by Bush's declining poll numbers, and I fear it will take more than a speech to turn that around. It is actually hard to imagine any conceivable development in Iraq that the press will report as positive.
Those who criticised the speech argues that Bush said little new (except that the Abu Ghraib prison will be demolished), but if he had changed the course in any way, it would have been portrayed as if he was "turning around," "admitting error" and "fumbling." Heads, I win, tails, you lose.
But it is true that Bush was short on specifics. What I was listening for, was some concrete statement about what transfer of authority on June 30th includes. Do they mean real sovereignity, or sovereignity light?
The questions that were left open, however, were clearly answered by Tony Blair at his monthly news conference today. He insisted that the transfer of power on June 30 is real, and not a sham transfer to sock puppets as the critics have been asserting.
He insisted: "If there's a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government.
"That's what the transfer of sovereignty means."
It's that simple. Watch and learn, Mr Bush.
However he added: "It doesn't mean that our troops are going to be ordered to do something our troops don't want to do - that remains as it is now."
There is no straw to grasp there, either. Many states have forces in foreign countries. The host country's sovereign government cannot order the visiting troops around, but they do have veto over their movement. That is the way it works.
Mr Blair said that the leaders of terror group al Qaeda knew "if we succeed in Iraq, they fail".
"They know perfectly well what will happen if Iraq gets on its feet..." he said.
"How can they turn round to the whole of the world and say 'look at wretched wicked Americans and what they are trying to do, it is all a battle against Islam'?"
I would hope, but I fear that they and their friends in the newsmedia will find a way to say just that.
PS: I listened to the reactions to Bush's speech on Norwegian state radio NRK yesterday, and found it rather amusing that to get "the Iraqi reaction" to Bush's decision to bulldoze Abu Ghraib, they went and asked the women outside who have relatives imprisoned by the Americans! How is that for unbiased opinions?
PS 2: Spartacus criticises the US media coverage.
11:47:56 PM 
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