First you whine that the president is out of step with the public. Now you whine that the president is dealing with the "publics perception". We fought the British for our independence and look where we are now. We fought ourselves in the civil war and look where we are now. Look at Germany, split east and west for years, and look where they are now. Can't anyone look at this from a broader perspective than today or tomorrow?

With all due respect to the commenters above, you just don't know what you are talking about. My family just left an assignment at the Pentagon where my husband was working in the Joint IED Defeat organization - a task force that has been addressing the IED issue since it became an issue for US forces (for more than 2 years). From reading this page, I can see there are many misconceptions out there about the IED issue - bad for Bush but good for the soldiers - better to have our enemy ill-informed. Thanks for the help with that.

i think training iraqis will not help your just training the insurgents how can u trust them how they have many faces and many hearst your just traing those who can kill us my god i hope they start using common sence i once rember during our creation of our country we too were insurgents from king in the 1700s we did anything possible to get rid of british

I dont believe that Bush is any more sincere about IED's, which are largely made from ordnance that we left unguarded when we went into Iraq, than he has been about vehicle and body armor. The latest Bush PR swing is just more stagecraft, not substance.

David-
IED is the PC way of saying "booby trap". Talk to any Viet Nam vet and they'll confirm it. They'll also tell you it is a difficult thing to stop as they're cheap because the enemy is using our recycled unexploded missles & rockets against us. The Bushies can continue to call this war a purse, but we all know it's a sow's ear.

I find it ironic that the same planners who did NOT secure the weapons bunkers (which became the bulk of the IEDs) are likely the same planners who are still the ones in charge of the current planning for our military effort.
Also ironic that the WMDs that mysteriously disappeared and are assumed to be in terrorist hideouts either in IRAQ or in neighboring areas who also are assumed to be supplying terrorists are not being used and instead stolen bunker weaponry are now the focus. I cannot imagine terrorists who are willing to decapitate even innocent bystanders would NOT be using WMDs given the chance.

Talking about IED's is like talking about getting the troops some new kind of toothbrush. It isn't about a single weapon or method of ambush. It's about the fact that the vast majority of Iraq's population do not want us there. Come to think of it... Neither does the vast majority of American's. Within a couple of years I expect to see picture of US Helicopters lifting embassy staff of the roof of a building in the "Green Zone."

Most of the IEDs are command detonated, meaning the device is being watched by someone with their finger on the trigger. If the device is hard-wired (As opposed to a wireless configuration) I don't know what "new technology" could be implemented to "defeat the bombers."

You can't stop the IED attacks, you can only reduce their effects and even this would be difficult as recent video of a Bradley Tank burning on the side of an Iraqi road has demonstrated.

Is anyone keeping track of how many Iraq battalions are fighting? It seems like the number changes depending on who you talk to. Does anyone in the is Bush administration have authority to keep track on the Iraqi readiness numbers?

IED's have been the problem for over 2 years. The President is a more than a day late and many dollars short. His administration is a house of lies. Americans die with their weapons at the rest position inside a vehicle because the military does not have enough troops on the ground to secure the country.