PRESIDENT BUSH’S speech last night was an attempt to show that “he gets it” — that he understands why Americans blame him for the mess in Iraq.

That can’t hurt. He has spent the past six weeks repeating choice bits from his State of the Union speech, while the state of Iraq’s union has exploded into clear crisis. At least he is acknowledging what the rest of the US is seeing nightly on the television.

But he cannot be surprised, as his poll ratings slip to their lowest ever levels, if the rest of his message is greeted with scepticism: about the need to “not lose our nerve”; the US’s “comprehensive strategy for victory”; and his view that the past three weeks in Iraq could have been much worse.

If there is comfort for him, it is at home, where the Democrats are failing to take advantage of his weakness.

Bush offered several bits of “good news”.

The first was that the US would pour platoons of experts into combating the threat of roadside bombs, which have killed many US soldiers, and which he called “the No 1 threat to Iraq’s future”. Perhaps they are, but we are spoilt for choice.

Tackling these bombs may be a useful thing for US forces to do. But the impression is that they do not know where to start. Since the bombing of the Shia al-Askariya shrine in Samarra, militias have been springing out of the shadows and bombs exploding in areas that used to be quiet.

Nor is Bush’s second claim credible: that the weeks since the Samarra bombing could have been worse. He argued that many had predicted that the bombing of the shrine would plunge Iraq into civil war. But “most Iraqis haven’t turned to violence”, he said, adding his voice to the futile wrangle about whether the killings now qualify as “civil war”.

Even if you concede the hypothetical point that the bloodshed could have been worse, it is clear that these weeks have changed the war. Before, the US was fighting Sunni militants. Now, Sunnis and Shias are fighting each other, with the US watching impotently.

So his third main claim also looked vulnerable: that the Iraqi security forces, under US guidance, were becoming more representative of Iraqi people. The greater fear, as coalition officials acknowledge, is that the US has equipped the Shias in what may become a civil war.

Bush devoted the bulk of his speech to technical points about bombs. There was briefer mention of democracy. But if the US has levers, they are political. Its strongest is to threaten to withhold cash (to pay officials, soldiers and police) if ministers do not form a proper government, including Sunnis; include Sunnis in the armed forces; and rein in private militias. It cannot threaten to withdraw its own troops, for fear of what would follow. As Bush said last night: “My recommendations on troop levels will be made depending on conditions on the ground.” As he also acknowledged, they are not good.

Democrats adrift

THE slide in Bush’s ratings should be a gift for the Democrats. But they are afflicted with the same problem as the Tories: how to criticise the conduct of the War on Terror that they initially supported.

The attempt by Russ Feingold, a Democrat senator from Wisconsin, to win a congressional censure of Bush brings a nasty twist. He wants a resolution to censure Bush for what he thinks has been unlawful wiretapping after September 11, 2001. The White House, noting that Feingold may contest the presidency in 2008, has dismissed this as political. More awkward for Democrats, it has challenged them to say that it “shouldn’t be listening to al-Qaeda communications”, even though “we are a nation at war”.

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