Reactions from the Press...

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Did this [speech] prepare the American people for the fact that Iraqis might make different choices, that Iraq could devolve into a civil war, that what we're doing there is much less popular in Iraq than the president implies, and did he look at the downside rather than the upside?" said Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The answer is no."

How about former secretary of state Madeleine Albright:

“He laid out five points (on the future of Iraq) but they raised as many questions as he provided ideas about,” Albright told CNN.

Albright said Bush did little to assure the public that Iraqis would support the new government, or how to improve security, rebuild the country, bring in additional foreign troops, or hold elections.

“There are many, many questions and I don’t think there was anything particularly new.

“It was a little bit more organized than the ideas that we’ve heard before.”

Andrew Sullivan gives it a B+, in general likes the message, but unimpressed with the messenger:

He seemed exhausted, which is hardly surprising. But he also seemed defensive. He doesn't want to concede errors, because, in this polarized climate, the opposition will seize on them for their own narrow purposes. But he should trust the public and dwell more on the inevitable setbacks and failures of warfare. He should not be afraid to tell us when we have suffered losses. He should not be wary of conceding that he and everyone else under-estimated the strength and tenacity of the insurgency. He still seems brittle to me in his accounts of what has transpired. It makes optimism less credible and hope more elusive.

John Podhoretz of the New York Post seems to disagree:

The president sounded stalwart and engaged, aware of all the moving parts and gear-shifts that will be necessary in the coming months.

The Washington Post gives us this take:

Bush did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for in the face of increasingly macabre violence in recent weeks -- from the assassination of the president of Iraq's Governing Council and controversy over dozens killed by U.S. warplanes at a purported wedding party to the grisly beheading of an American civilian.

Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.

And finally from the New York Times op/ed page:

If President Bush had been talking a year ago, after the fall of Baghdad, his speech at the Army War College last night might have sounded like a plan for moving forward. He was able to point to a new United Nations resolution being developed in consultation with American allies, not imposed in defiance of them, and to a timetable for moving Iraq toward elected self-government. He talked in general terms of expanding international involvement and stabilizing Iraq. But Mr. Bush was not starting fresh. He spoke after nearly 14 months of policy failures, none of them acknowledged by the president, which have left Iraq increasingly violent and drained Washington's credibility with the Iraqi people and the international community. They have been waiting for Mr. Bush to make a clean break with those policies. He did not do that last night. The speech reflected the fact that Mr. Bush has been backtracking lately, but he did not come close to charting the new course he needs to take. His "five steps" toward Iraqi independence were merely a recitation of the tasks ahead.