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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Bush Gives Speech to Change Minds on Iraq

Aired June 28, 2005 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

AARON BROWN, HOST: Well, good evening again.
It's fair to say this was not a speech the president hoped he would have to give a year after the Americans handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis. It was, instead, a speech forced by circumstance, including plunging poll numbers and growing criticism of the war in Iraq.

We'll get to all of that in a moment, as well as the reaction to the president's speech. But we begin with what the president had to say. Reporting for us, our White House correspondent, Dana Bash.

Dana, good evening.

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Aaron.

And certainly, President Bush, as you said, had hoped to perhaps not to give this kind of speech in this kind of circumstance.

The White House in the days leading up to the speech, tried to say that this is the kind of thing that the president feels it's important to do every so often. That is, give the American a snapshot of what is going on in Iraq.

But certainly, the kind of thing that he had to do with this particular speech: turn public opinion around at a time where six in 10 Americans simply think that he doesn't have any kind of plan in Iraq. That was something that was certainly a tough goal to achieve, and we'll see if he achieved that in the days and weeks ahead.

It's interesting to note, Aaron, why he came to Ft. Bragg. The White House understood that they would be open to criticism, that this would be looked at as more than -- no more than a campaign speech, no more than something that is political.

But the president, in talking to the soldiers and airmen here today, tried to make clear that he wanted to tell the American people exactly what his plan is in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH (voice-over): The commander in chief asked for patience, promised his plan will work and told Americans he feels their pain.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As I see the images of violence and bloodshed, every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question, is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it.

BASH: In his direct appeal to Americans to revive flagging support for the Iraq mission, the president stood before a sea of 750 soldiers and said he wants to start bringing troops home, but a deadline would backfire.

BUSH: Setting an artificial timetable would send the wrong message to the Iraqis, who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done.

BASH: Mr. Bush conceded, despite more than a year of intense training, Iraqi security forces need more help and suggested getting them more ready to defend themselves is the ticket home for U.S. troops.

BUSH: Our strategy can be summed up this way: as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.

BASH: He also raised and dismissed calls to add U.S. forces to finish the job faster, saying his commanders call that a bad idea.

BUSH: Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever.

BASH: In the latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans see Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. Half see it as a separate military action.

Throughout the speech, the president tried to enhance the support for Iraq by recasting it as part of the global war on terror, talking of foreign fighters crossing the border, referencing the 9/11 attacks six times in his 30-minute address, and taking on critics who call this a false connection.

BUSH: Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: "This third world war is raging in Iraq. The whole world is watching this war."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And for that reason the president said he intends to stay the course. He offered no new initiatives, no new policy ideas. This was about buying time, Aaron, in a strikingly similar address he gave a year ago when polls showed that stewardship -- his stewardship of Iraq and the whole idea, the concept of being Iraq were as low as they are right now -- Aaron.

BROWN: The problem, to some degree -- this is a theme I think we'll probably get to a number of times today -- is the president controls the stage tonight. But events over there control the stage beginning tomorrow. There can be an attack here, a suicide bombing there, something happens with Americans, whatever it is.

How much time are they trying to buy with these speeches? BASH: As much as they can, frankly, Aaron. And they understand that that is a continuing problem for them, in terms of their P.R. strategy, if you will.

But that is why they privately conceded that, essentially, the president went too long in talking to the American people about Iraq. It's been about six months. He's been focused on his domestic agenda, trying to get traction on things like Social Security and that, essentially, it was a long time coming for the president to talk like this about Iraq, especially given the images that people see on their television screens every day.

BROWN: Is the president going to continue this sort of thing? Now he talked about this in a radio address two weeks ago and might have last week. Is this now going to be a more constant message from the White House?

BASH: We'll see. You know, a couple of weeks ago, the White House told us that he was going to, quote, "sharpen his focus" on Iraq and also the economy. That's another issue that the White House understands is -- is not doing very well, and Americans want to hear from the president on it. So we'll see exactly what goes on over there.

There are some benchmarks, if you will, coming up, in terms of the political transition that I'm sure the president will want to talk about. But a lot of this will have to do, I'm sure, with how much this and other things change support, when you look at the polls.

BROWN: Dana, thank you. Dana Bash covers the White House for us.

We'll look at the polls, as Dana suggests. Numbers tell part of the story with Iraq: casualties, presidential approval ratings and the like. The numbers tonight are quick reactions before all the chatter that will follow, and the chatter does have a way of affecting how the country sees things. So, too, in these snap polls, do the people who actually watch the president.

Our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider, joins us with an early poll -- Bill.

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, we spoke to speak who watched the president's speech tonight and asked them their reaction.

Now, this not a random sample of the American public. People who watched the president's speech were more likely to be Republicans. OK?

Now, 46 percent of those viewers had a very positive reaction to the speech. Now, that is considerably lower than the 67 percent who had a very positive reaction to the president's speech of May the 1st, 2003, when he declared the major fighting in Iraq over from the deck of the aircraft carrier.

In fact, 46 percent is a less favorable response than President Bush has gotten to most of his State of the Union speeches.

The president scored his biggest gains on this question: is it better for the U.S. to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation improves, even if that takes many years, or should the U.S. set a timetable for removing troops?

Before the speech, 58 percent of these viewers said the U.S. should keep troops in Iraq as long as it takes. After the speech, that number jumped 12 points, to 70 percent.

Now President Bush argued that Iraq is the latest battlefield in the war on terrorism and that Americans fight in Iraq to protect the United States from another attack like 9/11.

But fewer than half the viewers, 45 percent, to be precise, believe the war in Iraq has made the war on terrorism easier. Thirty- seven percent said it's made the war on terrorism tougher, and 14 percent say it hasn't made any difference.

So you have a majority of viewers, 37 plus 14, again, a strongly Republican group, rejecting the president's argument that Iraq has helped the U.S. in the overall war on terrorism -- Aaron.

BROWN: OK. I think I heard coming up that about half the people who watched the speech tonight self-identify as Republicans. Is that about right?

SCHNEIDER: That's right. It's about two to one Republicans. It's 50 percent Republicans, 23 percent Democratic, 27 percent independent.

And here's something interesting: we -- a thousand people told us -- told the Gallup poll that they intended to watch the speech. But when we contacted them after the speech, only a third of them actually watched. There are a lot of other things people do on a summer evening.

BROWN: So, going back to that number and then taking the polling numbers, what do you conclude as a snap reaction to the speech? Was it successful?

SCHNEIDER: Modestly successful, I think, among those who watched the speech. Again, that was a fairly small number of viewers. I think it did shore up the president's support among those inclined to support him. But did it score a break through? Did it change a lot of people's minds? I doubt it.

BROWN: And would you expect -- because you watch these things all the time -- would you expect, as we talk about it and papers write about it and talk radio talks about it and all the rest, that these numbers are going to shift and change markedly from the kind of numbers we saw: the president's approval rating, feelings about Iraq, whether we should have gone to war, how it's going, all the rest?

SCHNEIDER: Well, of course, the story is the interpretation. And I think the interpretation that I've heard all evening is there's not a lot new here. The president didn't change course; the message was stay the course. And if you've got a public that's very unhappy with the course, a message to stay the course is not likely to encourage many people.

BROWN: Bill, thank you. Nice to see you.

SCHNEIDER: You, too.

BROWN: Bill Schneider in Washington tonight, doing some quick work.

Numbers are numbers. They tell a story. The voices, when you put them to the numbers, you get a bit more, a bit better, if you will. So from three parts of the country tonight, three families who watched the speech.

Rusty Dornin starts us off in Marin County, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Many of their neighbors are anti-war anti-Bush. That's made it difficult at times for the Downs family. For them, it's about supporting a young first lieutenant in the Marines, Philip Jr. He's just returned from a seven month tour in Iraq and wants to go back in November.

Before the speech, the Downs said they wanted to hear a message from President Bush with attitude.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would like him to make an impassioned plea to the American populace to steel their resolve and stay the course.

BUSH: ... who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go. That's as clear as possible.

He clearly outlined the reasons why we're not going to set arbitrary date to pull out or, you know, diminish our presence there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just hope that more people get that message from tonight's speech, that there -- there is a reason why we're there. And it's not for oil. It goes beyond that.

DORNIN: Younger brother Patrick doesn't think the speech will change things for anyone who has made up their mind about the war.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It wasn't really a persuasive speech so much but a telling of what he's going to do, what he plans to do. You know, he's not going to set a date of when they're leaving or anything like that. So he puts it out there for people to make up their own mind.

DORNIN: The Downs are fond of saying, never fall in love with a politician. They're not always pro-Bush. But when it comes to the war, when the president talks, they listen. And with a son going back to Iraq soon, they hope others did, too.

Rusty Dornin, CNN, Terra Linda (ph), California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Chris Huntington in Cold Spring, New York. The Hesparians (ph) live just across the river from the U.S. military academy at West Point and well aware of what's at stake in Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You get a lot of people who support the war and are very ardent supporters. And then we have those people who are just totally against it. I'm concerned about Iraq becoming another Vietnam.

HUNTINGTON: Mike is a supervisor with the New York State Banking Department, and Carol, a former manager with Pepsi and IBM, is now raising their children. Both Republicans, they helped elect President Bush twice.

If we were given some sort of concrete evidence that things are going in the right direction, rather than just seeing the nightly car bombs and the destruction and the death toll, that might -- that might go a long ways.

HUNTINGTON: The Hesparians (ph) are somewhat divided whether President Bush delivered that reassurance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, he sort of didn't give me a timetable which I wanted to hear, but I understand why. So I think he did really well. I'm happy with his performance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know that there is a real end in sight, based on what I've heard tonight.

HUNTINGTON: While the Hesparians (ph) discount the link between September 11 and the war on Iraq, they do agree that the mission there is in some measure a fight against terrorism, but they differ on whether history will judge the U.S. mission there to be the right one.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Definitely, I think, in my opinion, it is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think history will be the judge. I think the jury's out on that. It depends on how it ends.

HUNTINGTON: Chris Huntington, CNN, Cold Spring, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH OPPENHEIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is Keith Oppenheim in Streamwood, Illinois. SGT. CRAIG ESSICK, STREAMWOOD POLICE DEPARTMENT: Central, it's 190. I'm right behind Chuck E. Cheese's. Can we have a description of the vehicle?

OPPENHEIM: Sergeant Craig Essick is a cop in the suburbs of Chicago.

C. ESSICK: OK, Central, I'll be in that area.

OPPENHEIM: Just last February, Essick returned for more than a year of duty in the Army Reserves. He was a commander at the Abu Ghraib prison just after the documented abuses there.

C. ESSICK: I would have to say it was probably the most stressful period of my life.

OPPENHEIM: Though Essick has been a supporter of President Bush and the war, he now says he wants to hear something he hasn't heard yet.

C. ESSICK: What I'm looking for more than anything is some sort of an end state, where we have a pretty clear understanding of where we need to be for this war to end.

OPPENHEIM: As Essick watched the speech with his wife, Ann, his mood changed. The president's argument that giving a specific end time to American involvement would be a tip to the enemy resonated, up to a point.

C. ESSICK: I hopefully trust that he does know some of the specifics and he's sharing those with key people, and key people that need to know are getting it that information. I hope it's not a case where they don't know.

ANNE ESSICK, SGT. ESSICK'S WIFE: Military families are used to being patient and waiting. We do a lot of waiting.

OPPENHEIM: But patience for the Essicks can run out. Craig Essick says the president's speech has only bought so much breathing room.

C. ESSICK: Eventually there's going to come a time where we're going to have to say, you know, when is enough enough?

Keith Oppenheim, Streamwood, Illinois.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll have much more reaction to the president's speech tonight, official reaction, political action and the rest. But at a quarter past the hour, time for some of the other stories that made news today. Erica Hill joins us from Atlanta.

Good evening, Ms. Hill.

(NEWSBREAK) BROWN: That's a miracle that that's free. Thank you very much.

ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS: Indeed it is.

BROWN: Still to come, is there a disconnect between the president and the country on Iraq?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the problem, the disconnect. Whoa, whoa, you told us a year and a half ago, mission accomplished.

BROWN (voice-over): Rhetoric meets reality for the president and farther down the political line.

Also tonight, his state was gung ho. These days, it's a tougher sell.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: And I'm here to tell you, sir, in the most patriotic state I can imagine, people are beginning to question.

BROWN: Can the president turn things around. We'll talk with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

And later, the second term slump. Most presidents go through it. But has the war made it worse for this president? Can he get anything else done?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's real trouble.

BROWN: Others disagree. But any way you look at it, one thing is clear, from New York and around round the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Politicians, we think, by their nature, want us to see things as all black or all white. Progress is being made. The president is divorced from reality. Take your pick, one or the other.

The truth, of course, is rarely so simple in anything and surely not in Iraq.

Are things better there? Yes. Are things worse? Yes, there, too. Here's CNN's Jennifer Eccleston.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The big day has arrived for Faso Dejew (ph) and Nahrain Asho (ph).

Despite the daily disruptions to life in Baghdad, a rising number of young couples like them are taking the plunge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Life must go on. There must be marriages and happiness. ECCLESTON: Marriages are up 30 percent since Saddam's overthrow and the judge signing their wedding contract thinks he knows why.

GHANI AL-ISAA, JUDGE (through translator): There is an increase since the increase in all sectors of Iraqi people has gone up.

ECCLESTON: But not all would agree. Those who work, like the 350 judges trained in the past two years, are better paid, thanks to U.S. subsidies.

But unemployment remains chronic, somewhere between 48 and 24 percent, much higher than in prewar Iraq. The vast majority of Iraqi families still rely on government food rations. And the U.N. says average incomes fell from $255 in 2003 to $144 last year.

Electricity supply in Baghdad has recovered from a low point in 2003, but remains slightly below prewar levels. Oil production is also lower than before Saddam's overthrow and exports are down more than 40 percent.

But then, there's what many called call the Freedom Index. In January, nearly 60 percent of Iraqis voted choosing from a wide variety of parties. The assembly they voted for is meeting and beginning to frame a new constitution for Iraq, and 25 Sunni delegates are participating.

Internet cafes, unknown under Saddam, have sprung up in Baghdad. There are more than three million telephone subscribers, compared to fewer than a million before the war, and many of them are on cell phones.

Some 170 independent newspapers and magazines offer competing opinions, and there are 80 commercial radio stations.

Much of the country, away from the Sunni dominated north and west, is not racked by sectarian violence.

And some 150,000 Iraqi soldiers and police are trained, equipped and playing a larger role in battling the insurgents. They are now bearing the brunt of attacks. An estimated 270 were killed last month, compared with 150 a year ago.

And Iraqi civilians are being killed every day. Eighty U.S. soldiers were also killed last month. That's consistent with the average since the hand-over of sovereignty.

And the top American commander for the Middle East, General Abizaid, said this week that the insurgency's overall strength was about the same as six months ago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ECCLESTON: Despite the undeniable progress here one year after the handover of sovereignty, five months after historic elections, the grinding violence, the lack of personal security, the hardships of day-to-day living, this limits most Iraqis' abilities to believe their government's and American assertions that life, is indeed improving -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jennifer, thank you. It's been a long day and night for you. We appreciate your work tonight. Thank you.

Had the war been going better, there might never have been a speech tonight. Presidents rarely ask the country for patience until patience wears thin, and clearly it's beginning to.

In the age of media, support for the war has had plenty of ups and downs: some the president controlled; others he didn't; some he couldn't. So how we got here and what it means from CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are no more campaigns to run, but there is history to be written. And if history is to be kind to George W. Bush, he needs more time in Iraq. For weeks, his administration has been asking for more, perhaps years more.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Important victories are seldom won without risk, sacrifice and patience.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: It is work that requires that we as Americans reach down in ourselves and look for the kind of patience and generosity that we have exhibited in the past, and understanding that democracy takes time.

CROWLEY: The problem for the president is that nothing said over here speaks as loudly as what goes on over there.

BUT: Victory in Iraq is certain, but it is not complete.

CROWLEY: Never was support for the war as high as it was in mid- April, 2003. It had been less than a month. U.S. troops were in Baghdad. The Pentagon declared major combat over, and 76 percent of Americans approved of the president's handling of Iraq.

By the end of the first summer at war, though, U.S. combat deaths were up, and support fell dramatically.

Saddam Hussein's capture in December briefly revived the president's standing, only to be followed by serial setbacks in the spring of last year.

Suicide bombings, the beheading of Nicholas Berg and the prison Abu Ghraib. By last summer, public approval hit a new low. It has picked up only once since then, in early February, right after Iraqis voted for the first time.

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN (R-VIRGINIA): People said, isn't this great? They were uplifted to see women moving like slow moving targets to vote and men voting after them and raising their purple fingers in defiance of the threats of the terrorists, that uplifted Americans.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CROWLEY: Without a patient public, the president faces increasing resistance from lawmakers to approve the money to pay for the bar and to attend the funerals of those who paid the highest price.

SEN. MIKE DEWINE (R), OHIO: This is very tough. We've lost 80 Ohioans. You know, there's hardly a community that has not been hit. It's tough, and so it's hitting home. It's hitting home at people.

CROWLEY: Even in the reddest of red states they are pushing up against the limits of time.

ALLEN: I will say, though, that some of our Guard and Reserve members, who are on their third, fourth and fifth tours of duty, this is wearing on them.

CROWLEY: What George Bush needs is not just more time but a change in the tide, more progress. It seems he cannot have one without the other.

Candy Crowley, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Lindsey Graham joins us now, Senator Lindsey Graham from the state of South Carolina, a member of the Senate armed services committee. It's good to see you.

The "Washington Times" headlines the speech "Bush Invokes 9/11 in Iraq War." Was it apt for the president to go to the 9/11 well, if you will, six times in the speech?

GRAHAM: Well, I think the dynamic in Iraq is very similar in this regard. The people who have come to Iraq to wage war on this new infant democracy have as their goal to defeat democracy. They're the same type people who attacked us on 9/11.

So the big upsurge in violence has been suicide bombing. Most of the suicide bombers are foreign terrorists who align themselves with the bin Laden way of thinking.

In that regard, what happens in Iraq is very much part of the war on terror. And that's sort of been the missing link here. We've let that slip away. And I think the president did a good job tonight telling us, in the most stark terms possible, that whether it was before, it certainly now is a part of the war on terror.

BROWN: It's that last part of the sentence I suppose that is the subject of political debate.

GRAHAM: Sure.

BROWN: Let me leave that for another time.

We heard you earlier in the program talk about in your state, South Carolina, people starting to express doubts. Doubts that -- I assume that doubts about whether the war was right in the first place, doubts about whether we ought to stay there for an indefinite period of time, doubt?

GRAHAM: Yes. Kind of a range of emotions.

The -- the violence has gone on longer than we anticipated. Once the statue fell, there was hope that we could come home very quickly.

War is an uncertain thing. We can blame each other all we'd like. But the truth is that war is uncertain.

But the nature of the casualties on the increase, the level of violence on the increase, the protracted nature of it has taken a toll throughout the country.

And the second part of my statement, Aaron, was that this not Vietnam in my opinion. It is really a central front on the battle on the war on terror. And if we leave too soon it would be a catastrophic event. It would be a major defeat for us, a major win for the terrorists.

And the only way we'd ever lose was to leave the country in shambles, not able to defend itself by leaving too soon. And public opinion drives that.

So I think the president did a very good job tonight connecting the outcome to Iraq with our own national security.

BROWN: Senator, let me try and cover a couple more things, if I can.

GRAHAM: Sure.

BROWN: I -- going back to this question of doubt and how what has happened since the statute fell or since the mission accomplished speech or pick a date.

GRAHAM: Right.

BROWN: If the administration had -- well, let me phrase this slightly differently: Do you think that the administration was forthright enough from the get-go on how long it would take, how much it would cost, how difficult it would be and if the administration was not, has that contributed to, in some respects, to the doubts that you're starting to see in your state?

GRAHAM: I think the truth is, that right after the fall of the statue, people like me assumed that we would be embraced in a larger way. The insurgency wouldn't be as strong as it is. We didn't have enough troops, right after the fall of the country, to secure the borders. I blame myself as much as anybody, but the truth is we've made mistakes in judgment, underestimating the level of the insurgency, maybe not having enough troops at the beginning and we paid a price for that.

But if we look backward we're not going to win this war. This infant democracy is at a tipping point. They're about to write a constitution. It would be a blueprint to live together in peace regardless of religious differences, it would be a seat change the mid-east.

It took us, Aaron, years to write our constitution. What are we asking of the Iraqi people, to create a legal system out of nothing, to bridge a 1400-year-old religious dispute, to bring a police force and an army online, loyal to the people, not loyal to the dictator.

We're asking a lot and I do think patience is required of us all and that's what the president is asking for, some patience. And I join in that request. We have made mistakes but the biggest mistake we could make now is to leave this country in shambles and not stick it out.

BROWN: Senator, I suspect you know you this, it's always -- we always enjoy our conversations with you, brief though they may be. I hope you'll come back and join us soon.

GRAHAM: I enjoy your program very much.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina.

Later on in the program: He's hardly the first president to fall into a sophomore slump. What will it take for President Bush to pull himself out and can he pull himself out?

We take a break first.

Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The president is commander and chief of the armed forces, chief executive of the country, leader of his party. Each role effects the other which is awkward enough in peace time, let alone during a not-so-popular war. We're looking at this from a number of different directions tonight; this time the campaign trail from.

Reporting from Ohio: CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The small crowds tell you it's summer and that Paul Hackett is the underdog a Democrat running for Congress in Republican territory. A Marine just back from Iraq, who says it is time for the president to tell it straight.

PAUL HACKETT (D), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: And if you overplay the success and then, as the word gets out exactly what's going on, then it looks like politicians aren't being honest with us.

KING: Hackett saw duty in Fallujah and Ramadi, was discharged in March and plunged immediately into a special election for a vacant Congressional seat in southern Ohio. He calls himself an amateur politician, but doesn't hesitate to suggest, by support for the president's handling in Iraq is in decline.

HACKETT: That's the problem, the disconnect. Whoa, whoa, whoa, you told us a year-and-a-half ago: Mission accomplished. It's a hell of a lot worse there today

KING: The president's decision to speak to the nation in primetime surrounded by troops at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, is part of an urgent White House effort to rebuilt support.

SCOTT REED, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: In the last 60 days there has been a steady drip, drip, drip, of bad news coming out of Iraq every night; coming into your living room every night; when you talk about this at the dinner table with your families. Republicans and Democrats are nervous.

KING: senior Bush aides insist the problem is one of communication, not policy. Time spent on Social Security, for example, the White House says, allowed Iraq policy critics more say.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The fact of the matter is: The town's got a lot of people in it who are armchair quarterbacks or who like to comment on the passing scene.

KING: So, one element of the new strategy is to be more aggressive in answering the critics, but the administration is also recalibrating it's message.

Gone: Talk from the vice-president of an insurgency in its last throes. Now: The defense secretary soberly warns the fighting could last years.

HACKETT: The American people want to have confidence in their leadership. They want to believe in their leadership and I think that's the challenge that President Bush has.

KING: Ohio's second Congressional district is small-town conservative country. The president won 64 percent of the vote here and Republican candidate Jean Schmidt dismisses any talk of wavering support for the war.

JEAN SCHMIDT (R), CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: And southern Ohio believes in this president as I do, and his agenda, especially his agenda with this war.

KING: It's true, searching for votes here can be lonely work for a Democrat, but in the basement of a county courthouse, Hackett is told of a Republican convert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's so opposed to the war in Iraq that he was going to vote Democratic this time.

HACKETT: Well, bless him.

KING: Jay Purdy did a tour with the Marines in Vietnam. A Christian conservative and two-time Bush voter, disillusioned over Iraq. JAY PURDY, 2ND DISTRICT VOTER: It's appearing to me that it's: Kind of make it up as we go. And I don't know that, that's a good plan for a military action.

KING: Summer seems more a time for baseball than big presidential speeches. This one necessary, though, because even in places where patriotism runs deep, support for the troops doesn't mean there aren't questions for the commander in chief.

John King, CNN, Ripley, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It is fair and important to note that while the president is hardly basking in the glory of his job approval ratings these days, historically speaking, he has plenty of company. It may not be solace exactly, but it is fact. Second terms are tough. This one is starting out tougher than most. Here's our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): A speech before cheering members of the military. It's a traditional backdrop for a politically burdened president. And so far for George W. Bush, this second term has been a season of discontent.

His major domestic effort on Social Security is moribund. The news from Iraq is grim, and the poll numbers, well, they're pretty bleak.

His job approval rating is down to 45 percent. Among recent presidents at this point in their second terms, only Nixon ran slightly worse, and that was with Watergate in full bloom.

Bush gets bad numbers on the economy; just 41 percent approve of his policies. And on Iraq, nearly 60 percent now say the war is not worth the cost.

(on camera): It's the kind of news that attracts Washingtonians the way blood in the water attracts a shark. The president is going through a bad patch. How bad? Well, it's kind of like the old, politically incorrect joke. How's your wife? Compared to what?

PETER BEINART, NEW REPUBLIC: I think it's trouble.

GREENFIELD (voice-over): Peter Beinart of the liberal "New Republic" magazine says the trouble stems from Bush's reelection.

BEINART: He didn't win a commanding reelection victory. The country was still very, very divided. So I don't think he came in in as strong a position as, say, Reagan did in 1984, or even Clinton did in 1996.

GREENFIELD: From the right, Jonah Goldberg of "National Review" says it's just simply been a bad few months.

JONAH GOLDBERG, NATIONAL REVIEW: The war in Iraq has heated up in a way that he can't possibly -- that can't possibly help him, and they've been very bad on selling the economy, even though the economy is doing pretty well.

GREENFIELD: On the other hand, Iraq is far less deadly than was Vietnam for Johnson, and Bush's political troubles aren't close to what Nixon faced with Watergate, or Reagan with the Iran-Contra scandal, or Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.

Moreover, Bush has something that no second-term president of the last 35 years has had: A Congress controlled by his own party.

BEINART: It's practically impossible for a scandal to break out of this administration, because Congress refuses to investigate anything. Because it's controlled by Republicans.

GREENFIELD: And there's always the chance that a Supreme Court resignation will give the president what conservatives like Jonah Goldberg say would most help him.

GOLDBERG: What the conservative movement needs now, and in large party what the Republican Party needs now is a very clarifying, big, knock-down, drag-out fight, something that clears the air, the sort of brouhaha that says, oh, yeah, that's why I'm a conservative, and that's why they're liberal.

GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We're joined now by Andrew Breitbart, formerly of the Drudge Report, currently a contributor to the Huffington Post, and Amy Goodman, of Pacifica Radio, where she hosts "Democracy Now." It's good to see you both.

Amy, you say that we need to pull the American troops out now, yesterday, not tomorrow, right now. What do you imagine would happen in Iraq if we did that?

AMY GOODMAN, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I think it's more important to look at what is happening in Iraq right now, today.

BROWN: What do you imagine would happen if we pulled out?

GOODMAN: Well, I think it can't be worse than what we're looking at right now. We are talking about now, I mean, your own reporters can't go outside of their hotels, the roads are all cut off outside Baghdad. In this month alone, you compare it to June, 2004, a year ago -- then, 42 U.S. soldiers were killed; now, it's about double that.

BROWN: So you think if actually -- if the Americans pulled out tomorrow, Iraq would be a safer place, a better place, a more stable place than it is now? GOODMAN: I think the U.S. troops, the occupation is the magnet for the violence. It has become the target. And I think that has to be...

BROWN: And the jihadis would go home?

GOODMAN: ... removed.

BROWN: The jihadis would go home?

GOODMAN: I think that Iraqis need to be able to deal with their own country, and clearly, the occupation is the most serious irritant. It's even what people, the Iraqis voted for, when they made their decision in their election, they were voting for parties that were saying the occupation must end. I think Iraqis should be respected.

BROWN: We'll come back to that. Andrew, do you think that the country would feel more comfortable with the policy if the policy had more specific benchmarks?

ANDREW BREITBART, AUTHOR: I actually agree with that. I think that the president was great tonight, but where has he been the last few months? I think what the president needs to do now, because I think the polls will start going in his way as they do after speeches of this magnitude, I think he needs to start dictating how we're going to be victorious in Iraq. We can't just explain why we're there. We need to declare how we're going to be victorious. Not against insurgents, but terrorists who are there at the behest of Osama bin Laden, who has called it the third world war in Iraq.

BROWN: I'm not sure, honestly, I've never quite understood the mathematics here, whether the most difficult problem we face there are the foreigners, because certainly for a long time in the occupation they were not the most difficult task we faced there. How it became that they are now?

BREITBART: Well, I mean, we're also dealing with the remnancy of the Baathist regime. So either way, you're dealing with bad guys.

BROWN: And all bad guys are the same in this context?

BREITBART: I don't think that that's a difficult thing to figure out.

BROWN: I'm just trying to make sure that I understand. Yes.

GOODMAN: "The New York Times" last week was revealing what was in a CIA report that said right now, not when Saddam Hussein was there, but right now, Iraq is becoming a training ground for more extremists than occurred in the beginning of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. These are people training in assassination and kidnapping. This all has to end.

BROWN: I agree with that. I'll agree with that, that it is in many respects a worse place now than it was, in the terrorist sense, before the invasion. What I don't think I get is how our leaving makes that situation better. I think you do have an Afghanistan.

GOODMAN: I mean, you know, the saying from Vietnam, you're destroying the village in order to save it. That certainly applies today.

BROWN: Yeah, I lived through the era.

GOODMAN: So that certainly applies today. And I think what we have to look at, is an Iraq that the U.S. is not forcing to privatize, that is getting out, so it's free to sell its own oil, where the U.S. military, in their terrible fear of absolutely horrific situation is not killing Iraqis and insurgents coming from all over at this point are not coming in and also killing Iraqis.

BROWN: Amy, thank you. Andrew, last word literally, 10 seconds. Do you think the president bought himself six months?

BREITBART: No, I don't. I think he bought himself another two weeks, and then he needs to declare battle against MoveOn.org and people who have defined victory downwards. I mean, it's been a disaster the last few months.

GOODMAN: And the president has to stop...

BROWN: Good. Thank you. Thank you.

GOODMAN: ... connecting 9/11 with Iraq.

BROWN: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. Good to see you.

Ahead on the program, more on the other news of the day, including another CEO on trial for looting his company and ripping off investors. The verdict in a moment. A break first. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It's not even close to quarter to the hour, but time for the headlines. Erica Hill is in Atlanta again -- Erica.

HILL: We'll let it slide this time, Aaron. All right? Just don't make a habit of it.

Attorney generals from 44 states want to know how credit card information for 40 million customers was compromised. And they are demanding CardSystems Solutions, the company that processed that data, explain just how hackers gained access to it. The AGs also said the company needs to warn cardholders that may face the risk of fraud.

The verdict for former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy is in -- not guilty. A federal jury in Birmingham, Alabama acquitted Scrushy today on all 36 criminal counts. He was accused of masterminding a $2.7 billion accounting fraud of the health care company. Scrushy says he didn't know about the fraud. The defense blames 15 lower executives who've already pleaded guilty. Jury deliberations in that case, by the way, lasted more than a month. And just a reminder here: You can log onto cnn.com, click on the video link, where you can find video that you can watch as many times as you want, whenever you want, all for the low, low price of three monthly payments of sweet nevermind.

Unfortunately, though, we have some payments of our own to make. So NEWSNIGHT continues after this with "Morning Papers."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A very brief check of morning papers tonight.

"Washington Post," Bush says -- see, if I had my glasses off, I could have done that right the first time. "Bush says war is worth sacrifice." Also on the front page, "same-sex marriage advances in Canada. House of Commons approves measure." Not sure if there's all that controversy that there is here over that.

"San Antonio Express News." "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." And a very helpful graph down at the bottom about what the last year has been like in Iraq.

"Cincinnati Enquirer" leads local. "High promises, lagging results." "Special report: The trouble with charter schools."

"Chattanooga Times Free Press." I don't know about these people. "Tourists defy shark threat." Don't they want to be on cable? What's wrong with these people?

Weather tomorrow in Chicago, by the way -- did it go off? I didn't hear it. "Agh." That's the weather. It's very hot. We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Good to have you with us. See you tomorrow. Good night for all of us.

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