Unmoved by Bush's speech?

I know I was. Too much of the formulaic "on the hunt," "hard work," "freedom is on the march" business. I wonder why this guy (and his speechwriters) can't seem to hit the right notes on this subject. Three years in and he is still trying to explain the reasons why we are in Iraq. Why? It's not exactly rocket science. Austin Bay nails it in a paragraph:

In the late 1990s, bin Laden exploited an odd pressure created by America's commitment to enforce U.N. sanctions against Saddam. The presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia primed Al Qaeda's recruiting appeals. The Muslim street seethed with anger that infidel troops were "near Mecca." If the United Nations were to mean anything in terms of mitigating war on this planet, then Security Council Resolution 687 -- which boxed Saddam -- had to be enforced. But that put America in a long war against Saddam, enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq's north and south. But Al Qaeda's biggest recruiting tool was -- and is -- the political failure of the Arab Muslim world. In this dysfunctional world, tyranny and terror reinforce one another, with the people of the Middle East the inevitable victims...Toppling Saddam not only enforced the U.N. resolutions of 1991 -- which are of crucial import to those of us committed to a stable, just international system -- but it jerked the radicals' guns away from the moderates' heads. Witness the January vote in Iraq and the democratic surge in Lebanon.

Sprinkle in some truth-telling about false-starts, acknowledge or even take-on the line-straddling on torture, forthrightly explain the current decision-rules on troop-strength and clearly ask the public for its help and continued sacrifice and I think you've got a winner.

But Bush refuses to do this. And to everyone it just looks like more of the same and consequently they remain unmoved and unpersuaded. This is the same problem he has internationally. But as Herbert Meyer rightly points out, the clock is ticking and Bush doesn't have much time to get it right.