Bush to Speak Wed. @9pm EST; Frame Dem Response

The White House announced this morning that President Bush will tell the nation about his war escalation plans this Wednesday night at 9pm Eastern.

In discussing the speech this morning, WH spokesman Tony Snow reinforced for everyone that this will be, at its root, a political speech.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Monday that Bush "understands there is a lot of public anxiety" about the war. On the other hand, he said that Americans "don't want another Sept. 11" type of terrorist attack and that it is wiser to confront terrorists overseas in Iraq and other battlegrounds rather than in the United States.

So, four years later, we have President Bush trying to tell us that his war was and continues to be about the 9/11 attacks.  We went to war, according to this White House, because we could not allow a man like Saddam Hussein have the capability to deploy weapons of mass destruction against the United States in a post-9/11 world.  Of course, Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, and now, of course, he is dead.  With these two main rationales for war resolved, four years removed from Shock and Awe, President Bush says we need to escalate this war.

Assuming the Democratic Party will be given a chance to respond to this speech -- because it is irrefutably a political speech -- I want to ask the community what you would like to hear in the response, and (now that we're in the majority) how it should be framed.

At first blush, I was tempted by the thought of Democrats not responding at all.  It's hard to avoid the imagery of Bush walking the plank with this speech.  With 70 percent of Americans already disapproving of his job performance and almost 80 percent disapproving of his war management, letting the man call for an escalation of the effort seems certain to cement the country's negative opinion of him.

But Democrats are in charge of Congress now, and must rule instead of react.  And so, assuming they get the opportunity from our networks, they must respond.

In their response, I think their first order of business should once and for all be to say to the American people, as clearly as they can, that Iraq was in no way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  I think they should proceed by saying Congress will vote to enact and enforce the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which the White House has ignored almost line-for-line.  And I think that (as Wes Clark stated so eloquently yesterday), Democrats should vow to escalate the diplomatic track, because it is in the world's interests that more stable, more democratic, more just governance take root throughout the Middle East, and this war is failing that mission in every respect.

Finally, I would want the Democratic response to emphasize that investigations and oversight will be frenetic and thorough, that government and military-industrial-security representatives will be brought up to the Hill to testify under oath about their conduct of this war, their intrusions into our privacy, and their financial stake in seeing this war continue.

What about you?  How do you want Democrats to respond to Bush's plan to escalate the Iraq war, and his certain invocation of 9/11 as the reason we're there?  Who would deliver the best response?  (I vote Murtha for the reply...)