Earlier today President Bush had a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Noui al-Maliki, and during his remarks he told the world not to expect him to make a graceful exit from Iraq.
Al Qaeda wants a safe haven in Iraq. Al Qaeda made it clear earlier that suicide bombers would increase sectarian violence. That was part of their strategy. One of our goals is to deny safe haven for al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Maliki government expects us and wants us to provide that vital part of security.
So we’ll be in Iraq until the job is complete, at the request of a sovereign government elected by the people. I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq. We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done, so long as the government wants us there.
The President’s meaning here is clear. He is saying that he means to keep America in Iraq until either the job is complete or Iraq’s elected government asks us to leave, and that we shouldn’t expect his administration to come up some excuse for a “graceful exit” from the country.
Pretty straight forward, right? Well this is how those remarks get reported in the media:
Wonderful how they take a positive statement of purpose from the President and twist it around to sound like a defeatist admission of failure, isn’t it?
The sad thing is that the media does this sort of thing every single day in its coverage of Iraq, and then we all sit around and wonder why this is an unpopular war.