From this week’s installment of “Window on The Week”:

President Bush embarked on another campaign to sell the Iraq War, coinciding with its third anniversary. If high spirits alone were enough to restore faith in the war effort, Bush would have won the public-opinion battle this week. He was passionate, conversational, and confident. His most important speech was in Cleveland, where he described in detail the setbacks and progress in the western Iraqi town of Tal Afar over the last two years. It was a useful departure from his standard war rhetoric, which has been mind-numbingly repetitive and has emphasized continuity (“stay the course”) even though his administration’s approach in Iraq has been dynamic, reacting to changed conditions and lessons learned. Bush would be better off if, instead of endlessly re-litigating the war’s run-up and justification, he talked frankly and with as much specificity as possible about current conditions and how we intend to deal with them. People want to know there is a path to victory in Iraq–that is the key to attitudes to the war. The fact that, say, U.N. resolution 1441 passed unanimously is not relevant to this question. Unfortunately, the most persuasive arguments in the world won’t lessen sectarian violence or hasten the day of major U.S. troop withdrawals–the kind of indicators of progress that might make a big difference in American public opinion.

Read all of “Window on The Week” here.