Everybody Knows

Last night I aked, "Will that fool anybody?"

Today, according to an AP-Ipsos poll, the answer seems to be No:

Americans overwhelmingly oppose sending more U.S. forces to Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll that serves as a strong repudiation of President Bush's plan to send another 21,500 troops.

The opposition to boosting troop levels in Iraq reflects growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place and that a stable, democratic government can be established there. Just 35 percent think it was right for the United States to go to war, a new low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago, when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move.

… Fully 70 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops, and a like number don't think such an increase would help stabilize the situation there.

That poll was taken before last night's speech, but the president's thorazine delivery of Nothing New can't have done much to sway opinion.

Some of what Bush said last night actually pulled the rug out from under his staunchest supporters — those clinging to the belief that everything is going well in Iraq and that any appearance of chaos and quagmire is the result of a deliberate conspiracy of deception by the evil media. This hard-core core has spent the past three years devoutly affirming that they trust nothing except what they hear from the lips of God's chosen president and thus, encouraged by that president, have denied that lethal chaos and death squads run the show in Baghdad, denied that there is a widening gyre of sectarian violence, denied that mistakes have been made, denied that the situation isn't perfectly acceptable. They have denied all of these things because President Bush told them to — because he and his court prophets at Fox News have said, time and again, that every journalist reporting such things was lying, was not to be trusted, was the enemy of America.

But then, last night, trying to make the case for a "change in strategy" that is neither a change nor a matter of strategy, Bush pulled a 180. He affirmed that everything those journalists have been reporting is true and that, therefore, he has been lying — about Iraq, about "the media" — for a very long time:

in 2006 … the violence in Iraq — particularly in Baghdad — overwhelmed the political gains the Iraqis had made. … The result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today.

The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq.

The amazing thing — not surprising, but still astonishing to see — is that this will not alter the views of this hard-core group at all. Does Bush contradict himself? Very well, he contradicts himself. He is large, he encompasses multitudes! These folks are masters of cognitive dissonance. Tiger Woods plays golf. Beyonce sings. They accept incompatible ideas. It's what they do, those some of the people, all of the time.

Anyway, in honor of that AP-Ipsos poll and the all of the people who cannot be fooled all of the time: