The battle cry from the Kerry campaign and the strong innuendo from America's major news outlets is that President Bush stumbled blindly into post-combat difficulties in Iraq and has no plan for what to do next. In order to inform the public on the current status in Iraq and his future plans for the new nation, President Bush has scheduled a prime-time speech for this evening. Topics that the President plans to discuss include: security in Iraq, the June 30 hand-off and the Iraqi elections. The President will also likely say a few words about Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The speech is said to be nearly 30 minutes long.
In summary, President Bush scheduled a major, prime-time speech that will address the questions that Senator Kerry and the mainstream media have been asking for weeks. However, all four major networks have decided not to air the speech. In other words, the major news outlets have decided to deny access to the Commander in Chief's address to those who do not have cable television. Instead of airing the speech, the networks have decided that it is sufficient to just edit and summarize the speech as they see fit on tomorrow's evening news.
I'm not one to jump onto conspiracy theories, but I do not think that it takes too much imagination to see this programming decision by the networks as a political manuever. I believe that the audience for this speech is being intentionally limited so that the networks can continue to claim that the President has no real plan for Iraq. Maybe I'm going too far with this, but I am angry.
For those of you who are interested in hearing the President's actual address and not just Dan Rather's summary tomorrow night, the speech will be aired on Fox News at 8 pm this evening. I believe that it will also air on MSNBC.
