United States President George Bush, politically weaker than ever, is to mount what could be a last-stand defence of his unpopular Iraq strategy on Tuesday in his annual State of the Union speech.
Speaking for the first time to a US Congress controlled by opposition Democrats, Bush is also to lay out broad health care, environment and immigration reforms in an effort to shape his final two years in office.
”I’m going to remind Congress that we’ve got to show the American people that we’re capable of accomplishing some big things,” he told USA Today in an interview published on Monday.
Bush’s prime-time televised address, set for 9pm local time (0200 GMT Wednesday), came as his poll numbers were mired at an all-time low and US forces in Iraq faced some of the worst violence since the March 2003 invasion.
And US lawmakers, both Democrats and more and more of the president’s Republicans, have proposed or publicly backed various measures opposing his decision to send 21 500 more US troops into battle.
A new Washington Post/ABC television poll found that 65% of Americans oppose that plan, up from 61% just after he announced it in a speech nearly two weeks ago.
”There’s no question there’s a lot of scepticism, both Republicans and Democrats, and the best way to convince them that this makes sense is to implement it and show them that it works,” Bush told USA Today.
White House officials pointed to new developments in Iraq, acknowledging the soaring death toll and past errors but underlining what they described as promising new developments in quelling deadly sectarian violence.
Iraqi and US forces have captured more than 600 fighters loyal to firebrand Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the US military said on Tuesday, following a day of carnage that left 100 dead in a string of bombings in and around Baghdad.
In a major crackdown launched in the past few weeks against the Mahdi Army — the strongly anti-US militia headed by Sadr and now considered the biggest security threat to Iraq by the Pentagon — more than 600 fighters and 16 militia leaders have been detained, the military said.
”We don’t expect people to change their minds overnight, but take a look at what’s going on the ground,” White House spokesperson Tony Snow told ABC television.
But those developments seemed unlikely to quiet criticism from Democrats nearly four years into a war that has cost billions of dollars and the lives of more than 3 000 US soldiers.
”There’s a great discouragement about the president’s leadership,” Senator Hillary Clinton, now part of the crowded field to replace Bush in 2008, told NBC television.
Democrats will work with the president because of his considerable institutional powers, ”but we have to do it in a way that moves the progress forward for average Americans”, she said.
And Bush is less popular than any US president ahead of a State of the Union speech since Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace following the Watergate political scandal in 1974, according to the latest poll figures.
Bush is not expected to lay out his Iraq plan in detail, but to place the unpopular conflict in the context of the more popular global war on terrorism, and to highlight domestic priorities that may appeal to Democrats.
”The president has got two years left in office, and he wants to get important business done. And he understands that there are problems that will not go away,” said Snow.
Experts said that some of Bush’s domestic initiatives — especially the guest-worker programme at the heart of his immigration reform push — appeal more to Democrats than his own Republicans.
”If the president still wants to get something done, he’s got a quarter of his presidency ahead of him,” said Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University.
”What can he say that has a chance of success? You deal with bipartisanship,” said Hess. ”Is anybody listening? That’s a good question.” — AFP
