Even Republican Senator Gordon Smith Sees the Bush Speech As A Last Ditch "Hail Mary" Pass With No One To Catch The Ball

Oregon's Republican Senator, who has recently emerged as a critic of the Iraq War has pretty much described what many can plainly see, that the Bush Iraq Speech Wednesday night was only a desperate "Hail Mary" pass with no Iraqi military really capable of catching the ball. There is no real will to actually stop the violence in Iraq, a land of many militias and armed organizations.

At least 40 armed organizations including Shiite militias, Sunni militias, Baathists, Nasserites, Kurdish Peshmerga, Islamists and the tiny Al Qaeda organization among others operate in Iraq. These armed groups comprise more than 200,000 members with Shiite militia organizations connected to the main Shiite government party, The Supreme Council For The Islamic Revolution In Iraq, and the Shiite Mahdi Army of cleric Muqtafa al-Sadr are responsible for most of the sectarian violence in Iraq. Nothing in the Bush speech really addressed this problem.

This week, the combined forces of American and Iraqi troops attempted to prevent the Sunni insurgent violence along just one street in Baghdad, Haifa Street, just a little above the International Green Zone. Insurgents used guns, rockets and mortars in a fierce 10 hour gunfight with U.S. and Iraqi forces. And after killing 50 insurgents and capturing 11 more, fresh Sunni insurgents have restarted the fighting once more.

Mr. Bush would have us believe that sending 20,000 more U.S. soldiers will turn the tide in Iraq and do what the 130,000 American troops and about 200,00 Iraqi soldiers and police cannot do. But Haifa Street is a great example. The current Bush policies cannot even control the insurgent violence along just one street in Baghdad, let alone the entire city of Baghdad, or the nation of Iraq as a whole. Yet Mr. Bush asks the public to just trust him when his instincts about Iraq have never been good. Any further trust in Bush's botched up policies in Iraq is a real leap of faith.