Calculating spin: While President Bush's televised speech in Cincinnati last night was rich in rhetoric, it contained little that was new. The Bush administration wants to keep everybody happy, both at home and abroad, while it reassembles its military machine in the Gulf and gets ready for war.
Saddam Hussein is a 'murderous tyrant' who can be compared to Stalin, said Bush. Nothing much for US voters, gearing up for midterm elections on 5 November, to disagree with there.
Saddam Hussein may have weapons of mass destruction which he may use against America. Nothing much for Congress, expected later this week to give Bush authority to go to war, to disagree with either.
Significantly, the Bush pr people, while touting the speech as important, failed to ask TV networks for air time. Neither ABC, CBS nor NBC showed the speech live.
In Wisconsin, regulars in a bar watched the Green Bay Packers on TV and didn't even know that the President was on. [Wisconsin Post-Crescent].
Possibly the Bush spinmeisters figured out from their focus group surveys that, as reported in the CBS/New York Times poll, most Americans think Bush is concentrating too much on Iraq when he should be concentrating on domestic economic issues. [CBS].
Bush did give a new definition of 'regime change'. If Iraq cooperated with weapons inspectors, if it disarmed, if it behaved decently towards its minority groups, it would be making a change that would constitute a change in the Iraqi regime and war would be averted, he suggested. Saddam may be finished, but his generals have a choice.
Bush's (relatively) conciliatory language gives the UN Security Council the opportunity to meet him half way and agree to a new, tougher UN resolution.
