Tony Cordesman: "Key parts of his speech . . . . were driven by spin, rather than a frank effort to warn the American people of the sacrifices necessary to win and the risks involved. The end result was to mislead in ways that can come back to haunt the Administration and reduce longer-term public support."
"One key failure was his effort to explain the insurgency in Iraq almost solely in terms of foreign Islamic extremists. The President correctly referred to hundreds of foreign fighters, their horrifying extremism, and the very real threat they pose. He totally failed to mention the thousands of native Iraqis that make up the core of the insurgency, the fact we have only some 600 foreign detainees out of a total of 14,000, the fact most intelligence estimates put foreign fighters at around 5% of the total, and the fact we face a major native popular Sunni uprising and deep Sunni distrust."
"He implied the liberation, elections and democracy had somehow unified Iraq when they clearly have not, and glossed over the major political turmoil that will accompany the efforts to draft the constitution and elections to come. The President fundamentally misstated the true nature of the threat and risks in Iraq."