Yesterday, President Bush told the nation he would endorse a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq:

At the same time, they understand that [Iraq's] success will require U.S. political, economic and security engagement that extends beyond my Presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship.

Reinforcing Bush’s call, this morning, outgoing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow went as far as to claim the Iraqi public supports Bush’s call for an “enduring” occupation:

Q: How long are we going to be in Iraq? Because the President last night was setting the stage for a long-term relationship with the Iraqis, which would include a U.S. military presence there.

SNOW: Yeah, well, the Iraqis want that.

Watch it:

But earlier this week, an ABC News/BBC/NHK survey of Iraqis stated that 79 percent of Iraqis oppose the U.S. presence — including 84 percent of Shi’as and 98 percent of Sunnis:

Fifty-seven percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S. troops, up from 17 percent in 2004. As Matthew Yglesias observed, “when an actual majority support killing our soldiers, then how, exactly, are the soldiers supposed to help Iraq’s population?”

Furthermore, in June, a majority of the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution rejecting “the continuing occupation of their country.”

Americans and Iraqis stand united in telling President Bush to withdraw.

Digg It!

Following President Bush’s speech last night, Fox was the only broadcast network that did not air Sen. Jack Reed’s (D-RI) rebuttal. Instead, anchor Shepard Smith directed viewers to watch Reed’s reply on cable at Fox News. “ABC, NBC, and CBS all aired the Democratic response,” MediaMatters notes.

On Aug. 23, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) called on President Bush to announce on Sept. 15 that approximately 5,000 troops “could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year.”

That same day, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) put out a statement blasting Warner’s proposal, calling withdrawal “irresponsible“:

A majority of the Senate voted to give General Petraeus until mid-September to implement a successful new surge strategy, and any effort to cut short this timeline and set an arbitrary withdrawal deadline is premature and irresponsible. The last thing we need is 535 ‘Generals’ in Congress telling our troops how to win this fight.

Last night, President Bush gave a prime time address on Iraq, announcing a plan that largely mirrors Warner’s proposal. Yet instead of criticizing it as being “irresponsible” and “arbitrary,” Inhofe immediately put out a statement calling Bush’s speech “wise”:

President Bush has resolved to follow the strategic advice of military commanders on the ground rather than be swayed by political attempts to micromanage the war from the halls of Congress. During recent months, General Petraeus successfully implemented a surge in troop levels resulting in visible military improvements. His recommendations come from first-hand experience and a distinguished 35-year long career in the U.S. Armed Forces — the President is wise to heed his advice.

Inhofe isn’t the only official to have a change of heart. The White House itself, in fact, “reached out to Warner’s staff and asked” the senator to back away from his position in August. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that the President believes “setting a specific timetable for withdrawal” would be a “disastrous course of action.”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a Vietnam veteran, weighed in last night on House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) comment that the sacrifice of soldiers who have died or been wounded in Iraq “will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda.” McCain spoke to Time’s Ana Marie Cox on his campaign bus:

“He misspoke. With all due respect, every American wounded or sacrificed is the greatest possible price to pay,” and we should all be grateful, “particularly those of us who sit in relative safety while those young men and women are fighting.”

Asked if Boehner’s comments deserve the same level of condemnation as the Petraeus ad, McCain said no. “He misspoke, he didn’t take out an ad… I’m not excusing him, I just think it’s a different level.”

Boehner’s office claims he was talking “about the money spent in Iraq,” but a transcript of his comments shows he was clearly asked about “the loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month” in Iraq.

UPDATE: Cox emailed TPM’s Greg Sargent to note that she didn’t report all of McCain’s comments. He also said that Boehner “ought to retract it.”

My key excerpts from Ezra Klein’s review of Mark Penn’s book for In These Times:

That’s the Penn defense, and he and his friends have long stuck to it. “Mark is somebody who is very, very comfortable with quantification,” enthused Doug Schoen, his polling partner of over 30 years. “He is very comfortable with numbers.” It is this reputation that, so far as I can tell, Mark Penn has written Microtrends to dispel. Unlike most pollsters, Penn never releases his raw numbers, only his analysis. So we must take it on faith that his methodology is rigorous, his polls accurate and his interpretations fair. This book is our first opportunity to observe, at length, how adroitly Penn handles raw data. And the answer is stunning, even to a doubter like me. Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame.

I first flipped through Microtrends while at the YearlyKos convention, and Penn, astonishingly, seemed to comprehend the importance of the loosely connected, grassroots-driven, progressive movement’s flowering. “I suspect the lefty boom will bring a surge in the promotion of sheer creative energy,” Penn writes, “driven by an idea that is at the heart of this book—that small groups of people, sharing common experiences, can increasingly be drawn together to rally for their interests.” I was shocked—Penn was speaking admirably of “lefties,” not trying to recast them as moderates, not trying to write them out of the party? He was endorsing open-source politics, rather than a top-down structure? I had misjudged the man!

I read on. Penn was talking about actual lefties—people who are born left-handed. Increasingly grim, I absorbed the first hard blows of Penn’s interpretative technique: “More lefties,” he enthuses, “could mean more military innovation: Famous military leaders from Charlemagne to Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Napoleon—as well as Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf—were left-handed.” He uses the same thunderingly awful logic to argue that we’ll see more art and music greats, more famous criminals, more great comedians, more “executive greatness,” and better tennis and basketball players.

I would only add that while each political consultant is a beautiful unique snowflake, there’s a real systemic rot in the whole trade. Read my review of Bob Shrum’s book, this article by Amy Sullivan, and this one from Noam Scheiber.

Minor error corrected

In an interview with the BBC, Professor John Marburger, Bush’s chief science adviser, said it was an “unequivocal” fact that climate change is man-made and that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are to blame.

Marburger said he “strongly agrees” with the IPCC reports and “supports its conclusions.” He added:

I think there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we ought to be. And it’s going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies. [...]

The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and there’s no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unliveable.

Watch the BBC report:

Roger Harrabin, the BBC climate reporter who conducted the interview, noted that “historically, the White House has given a number of different messages on climate change. You hear one message from Dick Cheney saying that there’s a debate we’ll have to carry on.” On the other hand, Marburger says the science is undisputed. So far, Cheney has been winning the battle in setting U.S. policy.

Just this past February, Cheney asserted, “There does not appear to be a consensus” that global warming is “caused by man.” Bush has repeatedly echoed Cheney’s line that there is a “debate” over the science.

Harrabin noted that “there is very little pressure from the public,” causing a kind of “stasis” in the climate change debate. “The headway in the U.S. is very slow,” he said, “and that feeds into the international process where other countries are looking at the U.S. and saying, hey, you’re the big emitter, if you’re not cutting, then how’s that going to impact on our industries.”