Know Your Enemy

WaPo offers an interesting review of Bush's speech - An Offering of Detail But No New Substance:

Administration officials believe much of the public is still eager for victory and open to persuasion if the president can make the case that he has made progress. They took heart in a survey last week by RT Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm, that found that 49 percent of Americans favor bringing troops home when only "specific goals and objectives" are met, 30 percent want a fixed timetable for pulling out and 16 percent support immediate withdrawal. The middle 30 percent, they figure, is the real political battleground...

W. Patrick Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency expert on Iraqi affairs, said that Bush's language "changes the frame of reference," because the president acknowledged "for the first time this is essentially an Iraqi insurrection." Lang said Bush's previous emphasis on the foreign makeup of the insurgency "made it impossible for U.S. forces to deal with the enemy because we needed to defeat them totally." Now, Lang suggested, U.S. military officers have room to try to work out deals with Iraqi opposition fighters.