Reporting the ifs, ands, and buts

The distance between President Bush and the people of Anbar province he purportedly wanted to be in touch with this morning is about the same as the distance between the US Congress and the people it purportedly represents. 

A year before they choose a new government for the post-Bush era, Americans are desperate to change the country's course.

According to opinion polls and interviews with political experts and voters, the U.S. population is more liberal than at any time in a generation, hungering to end the Iraq war, turn inward and use the federal government to solve problems at home.

The McClatchy reporter finds cynicism among Bush's former supporters.

"People are very unhappy, very unsettled,'' said Megan Phillips, a teacher from Centerville, a town of about 6,000 in southern Iowa.

Phillips once considered herself a proud Republican. Small-town. Anti-abortion. Pro-gun.

But she soured on Bush's landmark education overhaul, the No Child Left Behind Act. And she turned against the war — and Bush — with a passion that underscores how deeply the national unity that rose up after 9-11 has given way to cynicism.

"People don't trust anything coming out of Washington,'' she said. "When Bush says we're winning the war in Iraq, I say, 'Oh really?' The weapons of mass destruction weren't there. Why are we still there? We want our people to come home. There are so many things at home that need to be taken care of."

Never ever has the power of the military-industrial complex had so many allies in the media and in both parties in Congress.  Taken all together, they are a formidable force that easily counters the political will of  a huge majority of voters.  McClatchy remains one of the few reliable sources of sober, eyes-wide-open reporting.  In another piece today it lays out statements from the White House and Congress along with the usually unreported ifs, ands, and buts.

In August, Bush said American forces had made advances against al Qaida and Shiite Muslim extremists, that sectarian violence had sharply decreased in Baghdad and that Iraqis were cooperating with U.S. forces in some areas and making local progress, such as reopening banks in one city and establishing an anti-corruption commission in another.

He also welcomed a vague agreement among top Iraqi officials to advance key long-stalled political reforms, including efforts to bring minority Sunni Muslims back into the government. He noted, however, that the reforms must pass the parliament.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio shared Bush’s upbeat assessment. “Throughout Iraq, General Petraeus’ strategy is working to drive out extremism and bring freedom to a part of the world that needs it most, and America will be safer because of it," Boehner said.

However, a recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — a consensus report from all American intelligence agencies — concluded that violence remains high and forecast that the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki would become more precarious in the months ahead.

Iraq's Cabinet has been paralyzed since Sunnis left it. Tariq al Hashemi, the Sunni vice president, said he wasn't happy with the recent vague plan for political reform and gave Maliki a list of demands.

But all that good sense and useful information -- and most important, voter "sentiment" -- is useless when faced with well-funded, carefully constructed partisanship, and the politics of very special interests.