"Strategy for Victory"

This odd post-'Mission Accomplished' phrase hovered as the slogan over Bush’s shoulder today as he delivered a Veterans Day speech aimed at regaining the high ground on the war in Iraq; presumably, the exercdise was also meant to turn the tide on plummeting approval ratings now festering somewhere below 40%.

Among the curious barbs, the President accused Democrats of revisionism of events leading up to the war:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

And in a particularly crass display of Veterans Day political grandstanding, Bush offered the following in summation:

These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them. Our troops deserve to know that this support will remain firm when the going gets tough. And our troops deserve to know that whatever our differences in Washington, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will settle for nothing less than victory.

John Kerry was reported as saying: "I wish President Bush knew better than to dishonour America's veterans by playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day."

Usually the President visits Arlington National Cemetary on Veterans Day, but Cheney was assigned that duty and was reported as having parroted Bush's message: "we can be certain that by the resolve of our country, by the rightness of our cause...we will prevail."

Between Bush and the Veep it all sounded a bit like an attempt to rescue the justice of the cause, in keeping with that line from Henry V: "methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King's company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable."

It remains to be seen whether the war can be won on pure piss and vinegar, but in the absence of anything else that seems to remain the "strategy for victory."