The president said "For Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides, they need to feel safe in their homes and neighbourhoods."

Two things are obvious from that statement: first, my transcript was from a British newspaper and secondly that along with the lobster tortellini they're serving up for dignitaries in the Green Zone palaces, they also serve up healthy heapings of pie in the sky.

When the objective reporting says that a major reason for diminishing civilian casualties is that fewer folks remain to be killed, and surveys show two thirds of Iraqis want us out and only slightly fewer sign off on the morality of killing a US soldier, you wonder if there's any real calculation anymore or if it's dementia calling our current mission "securing the Iraqi population." Any mathematician will tell you that adding consecutive negative numbers can never result in a positive number.

A modest proposal for Congress: get us the hell out of Iraq promptly and get Dubbya into Walter Reed for a checkup from the neck up.

In his speech, he acted as though everyone had been buying the last two or three years of dissembling, social engineering and misdirection. Thursday's count of straw man arguments reflected the amount of time the White House has had to tweak it.

Iraq is an ally of the United States. Why, we're almost alike, really. We say "America, what a country!" They say "Iraq, what country?"

He calls Iraq's enemy "those who threaten its future" though it is we who sealed its future by both the nature and the execution of our warmaking. You know in kindergarten, along with reading My Pet Goat, they also sing the C-i-r-c-u-m-s-p-e-c-t-i-o-n Song.

The civil war hasn't reversed in course; it is just being more successfully portrayed in Orwellian rhetoric for domestic consumption. Correspondents like Michael Ware continually poke holes in the spin du jour (and the Austrian accent is a plus), but of course, for many, the liberal media comes pre-demonized for your protection.

Are you feeling a little secured?

"Eight months ago, we adopted a new strategy," said Dubbya. But ten months ago he cooked up a scheme to call staying the course, which cost them an election, a surge - and stay the bloody course anyway.

"The government has not met its own legislative benchmarks - and in my meetings with Iraqi leaders, I have made it clear that they must." If he acts like King George over there, imagine what he thinks of you, Mr. & Mrs I Haven't Needed You Since the Election.

A speechwriter actually got Dubbya to read aloud "I have consulted with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other members of my national security team, Iraqi officials, and leaders of both parties in Congress." He could just as easily have said he had eaten 247 breakfasts, lunches and dinners since announcing the surge, for all the causality involved in the outcome.

The galling refusal to listen to the collective voice of the American people was summed up in fluent newspeak: "The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is return on success." Dubbya manages to keep the definition of success as loose as the well oiled dérailleur on his precious bike. So many previous ones were superseded for failing to pan out.

"If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened." The madman will not let go. He is saying only being driven out (by whom we must ask does he mean?) can keep him from his course.

Pretending he could heal his own nation which has turned two thirds against his misadventure, he said "we should be able to agree that America has a vital interest in preventing chaos and providing hope in the Middle East." We had that vital interest before "shock and awe" and the prosecution of a preemptive war without end, based on shifting rationales.

King George, from that land across the pond, told the good folks of Iraq to "demand that your leaders make the tough choices needed to achieve reconciliation. As you do, have confidence that America does not abandon our friends, and we will not abandon you."  He's saying to the Iraqi people that he can always slide the definition of success around and adjust the departure of our soldiers ad infinitum. Don't think we're leaving without what we came for!

And to the troops, their families and the concerned in general, when he said "and it is never too late to support our troops in a fight they can win," he offered the same reassurance.

Look over there, a bunny!