Q: Thank you, Mr. President. My question is on Iraq. Mr. President, this morning you talked at length about Afghanistan, Iran, but not Iraq. And I wanted to ask both of you, is France reconciled with the United States, the United States is reconciled with France? So what about Iraq? Can France, for instance, help to get out of the Iraqi quagmire? And President Bush, where do you stand on Iraq and your domestic debate on Iraq? Do you have a timetable for withdrawing troops?

BUSH: I don’t — you know, "quagmire" is an interesting word. If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, god, I love freedom — because that’s what’s happened. And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom is happening in Iraq. And we’re making progress.

The latest CNN poll shows that Americans are still overwhelming against the Iraq war. The propaganda push has convinced nobody. As Kevin Drum notes:

Apparently the American public is smart enough to realize that military progress isn’t really that meaningful without political progress, and we haven’t seen a dime’s worth of that. Unless and until we do, I don’t expect this trend to change.

Andrew Sullivan:

We do know that national political reconciliation hasn’t happened, and may be further away than ever. We do know that this was the actual point of the surge. And there are ominous indicators that any declaration of "Mission Accomplished" is premature..

Amanda says:

In June, Gen. David Petraeus said that U.S. troops had been in Iraq "long enough to become liberators again," echoing Vice President Cheney’s infamous pre-war prediction that the United States would "be greeted as liberators."