Bush Simplifies as Iraqi Goals Diminish

News Analysis: For Bush, Smaller Goals in Iraq-New York Times:

"I want our folks to remember our own constitution was not unanimously received" [Mr. Bush] said, comparing the fractious debates in Iraq to those among America's founders.

Using familiar phrasing from his last two public speeches to bolster slipping support for the Iraq War and anxieties over the constitutional process, Mr. Bush continued to apply simplistic rhetoric. Commenting on Dexter Filkins's coverage last week of the progress and Mr. Bush's speeches, I wrote NYT the following letter:

"We had a little trouble with our own conventions writing a constitution," Dexter Filkins (NYT 8/24/05) quotes President Bush as commenting on the Iraqi constitutional drafting process. But surely the President must realize how inadequate his analogy is. We did not write our constitution after a foreign army invasion overthrew an incumbent tyrant and became occupiers. Additional comparisons of Iraqi progress to American democracy and freedom must similarly be diminished by such a simplistic view.

Steven R. Wiseman's current news analysis quoted above, notes the administration's lack of commentary regarding the potential diminshing of Iraqi women's rights along with issues of federalism and concludes with a similar sentiment: "What [Mr. Bush] left out of his analogy is that while the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia was convening, there was not an insurgency in the countryside that seemed to be growing because of disaffection with the political process."
More:

• Full Text of Iraqi Constitution (VOA)
• "Winning in Iraq", David Brooks (NYT Op-Ed)
• Mideast Course At the Mercy of Local Factions (WPost Analysis)