I'm Anastasia Glova, your host for Friday's episode of Cato Daily Podcast.

Yesterday evening, President Bush gave a speech outlining his plan to deploy an additional 20,000 troops

to Iraq in a bid to at last declare victory. Our guest today is Cato adjunct scholar Patrick Baysham, who

has some commentary on the President's plan.

Patrick, do you perceive the President's speech as the commitment to success in Iraq that the White House

would like us to believe that it is, or rather its inability to admit failure?

I think President Bush's speech very much reflects an inability to admit failure on his part.

The president finds himself in a terrible bind both militarily and politically.

Obviously the situation on the ground in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. It's escalating, arguably out

of control. I would argue that Iraq is in a state of civil war. The president, very

belatedly, very reluctantly is implicitly acknowledging that or at least near to that state of affairs in Iraq.

But in dealing with that situation, he also has to confront the problem that he no longer has the political support domestically here in the United States for his apparently failed strategy and he is not a politician who is known to say

look boy I screwed up badly here this is how we move on he wants to suggest that

the policy is moving forward and there is

something of a new plan, but I would argue that an inability on his part to actually

acknowledge the seriousness and the true nature of the mistakes

that have been made really very strongly reduces the chances that this alleged new plan will actually bear fruit in Iraq.

I would agree with you that most of the country has rejected the president's

strategy so far, but most of the country isn't privy to the kind of intelligence that Bush

is, so how can Bush is so sure he's

wrong? Well I would for sake of brevity suggest two points as to why I think we

can have some confidence that President Bush is wrong.

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