For the record, Bush does seem to have given a public third person apology today: somebody was listening to our criticism I guess.
Anyway, I think the real problem is that Bush’s target audience is the American public, not Arabs. His language: “The Iraqi people must understand that…” is phrased in a way that would appeal to an American listener nodding over his determination to teach the Iraqis who we are, but to Arabs and Iraqis must simply sound condescending and arrogant. It came across as a lecture, which is not what they needed to hear.
And there’s another a real problem here that Bush needs to acknowledge.
He’s mentions almost every speech he gives on the Iraq war, he says something about rape rooms and torture chambers. He’s certianly right to do so: shutting those down was a major achievement of his foriegn policy.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100014/
The problem is comes when he makes statements like this: “We’re facing supporters of the outlaw cleric, remnants of Saddam’s regime that are still bitter that they don’t have the position to run the torture chambers and rape rooms.” McClellan has made even stronger statements to this effect (the military uses even more Orwellian terms, inexplicably calling insurgents “anti-Iraqi forces”). Now, to American audiences, that might sound all well and good: those evil Iraqs all just want Saddam and his regime back (laughable).
But consider that Abu Ghraib was, before Fallujah, the most attacked place in Iraq. Consider that many of the insurgents say they were attacking it precisely because they had heard rumors of what the Americans were doing in there and were outraged and wanted to put a stop to it and the whole place.
That makes Bush’s statements about the insurgents seem deliously out of touch to Iraqis, who already are not particularly won over by unconvincing exagerrations about who the insurgents are and what they want. Consider how people might see that: the insurgents were attacking targets, INCLUDING a prison that turned out to have both torture and rape, in order to stop it. And yet here is a President saying things like “One thing is for certain: There won’t be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms.” and blaming insurgent IRAQIS for wanting to bring those back, when in fact the ball is in the U.S. court now. That’s not good.
In addition, if the U.S. is for transparency: why is the report in question still classified “Secret” (apparently in violation of federal law) and only available because of a leak? And why are Iraqis hearing pundits roundly criticizing 60 minutes for making the photos public in the U.S.? None of that looks very good at a time in which we need to look our very best.