Last nights speech by President Bush. What do you think?

[Konovalov]

As per the topic of the thread what was your gut feeling having listened to or read the speech of President Bush? Is it a welcome change of strategy? Or do you feel it is just more of the same? Is it not enough or a case of too little and too late?

I'm not to sure myself. An additional 20k troops doesn't seem like a great deal. In fact haven't we in the past seen troop withdrawls and increases over the last few years that reflect similar numbers mentioned here? Given that how can an additional 20,000 make much of a difference?

My other serious doubt concerns the Iraqi government and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Is he really going to deliver what he has promised to President Bush over the last couple of days? He certainly hasn't done it in the past and I can't see any evidence of him doing it now. He has been a man of many words and little action in my opinion. And don't forget that if it wasn't for that thug Muqtada al-Sadr and his band of thugs and death squads that make up the Mahdi Army Al Maliki wouldn't have been elected PM in the first place. So how on earth he is going to disarm, arrest or pacify them is beyond me?

Looking back when we had Muqtada al-Sadr and his thugs in a corner we had a real opportunity back then to take him out yet we blew it by playing his own game. Now we are paying the price for it. For the first time I am going to say that this is looking like a lost cause, certainly in terms of the original goals that were set it looks that way. Best result now would be to split the country up into 3 and make sure that Al Qaeda cannot establish a base of operations in that region whilst trying to minimise Iran's growing sphere of influence. The only thing worse than invading Iraq would be to effect a complete withdrawl over the next 6-12 months. I don't want to even think about the consequences of that crazy policy.