Curiously, the White House did not request the on-air networks for time to air the speech live in prime time. It was billed as an important event, one that would set the tone for the President’s troubled re-election campaign. Despite its touted importance it was not important enough seek the widest possible American audience. Viewers were left to either seek out the important speech on Cable news outlets or choose entertainment over enlightenment. The voting audience was left, in the main, to rely on the predictable clips of the scheduled applause lines in a speech before a live and disciplined audience guaranteed to react favorably.

It was billed as a speech to announce a plan to restore Iraq. What it delivered was a list of five objectives, a list which we have heard before, without a plan for how to achieve those goals beyond promising that the occupying army would remain in place after the “occupation” ends on June 30th. The only thing new, something that had been towed around for two months by Washington’s trail balloons, was his plan to deal with the Abu Ghraib scandal – raze the building and hire Halliburton to replace it with a modern maximum security prison. It did not resonate, at least not with the Iraqi people. One Iraqi said, “The problem is not with the building but what goes on inside. We want them to change the rules, not pull down the building.”

The President might have announced that it was the policy of the United States to meet its obligation to provide humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions to all persons detained under the authority of the United States whether they are held at Abu Ghraib, a replacement facility, or anywhere else. He might have used the speech to announce to America, the Iraqi people, and the world that he, the President of the United States, would not countenance any violation of that policy and that anyone, no matter whether their rank was indicated by stars on the shoulder or stripes on the sleeve, would be held responsible for what goes on under their command.

In his final line of the speech, one we can expect to view repeatedly in his television ads between now and November, his language was not that of a peace maker but that of a conqueror. “We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard won ground for the realm of liberty”, he said and the War College audience provided the pre-scripted response.

The speech simply called on us to stay the course even though it promised that there would be more rocks ahead. It charted no new course.