Arianna Huffington, nationally syndicated columnist and the author of "Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America."

It's appropriate that President Bush was at the War College; it's just too bad that he chose to spend his time there speaking and not listening. If he had listened to the experts there over a year ago, he wouldn't have needed to give this desperate speech.

He came up with a "five-point plan," but he should have made it six. The missing element being the firing of all those responsible for the incredibly incompetent planning for this war and occupation.

The real problem with the Bush administration, shown especially in the Iraq war, isn't that it makes mistakes -- all administrations make mistakes -- but that it refuses to learn from them.

Like Bush said, wars are "chaotic," but how can you trust someone who refuses to admit reality? The first step to fixing a problem is seeing it accurately, and Bush's speech hardly gives one confidence that he does.

He still talks about "victory" over the "terrorists" and "foreign fighters" and "Saddam loyalists." But he doesn't seem to realize that we've lost the Iraqi people, that many of them, who don't fall into any of the above designations, now consider us the enemy. How can he solve this when he won't acknowledge it? He still seems to think that the U.S. public needs assurance that we'll win every military engagement. Of course we will. The question is whether or not there will be an unending number of military engagements, and his speech failed to give a solution for stopping -- and not just winning -- them.

What needs to be demolished is not just Abu Ghraib, but the policy apparatus that led us into this position. And that's not "looking backward" or "playing the blame game." Doing this is the only way to move forward and regain international credibility. Which is badly damaged, despite Bush's ludicrous contention last night that "our coalition is strong." It's not, and neither are our chances for success in this war until he truly acknowledges what's gone wrong.

Until he does this, any attempt to "make a diplomatic push for international support" is simply writing a check with nothing in the bank.

Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow, the Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress.

President Bush's speech, whose purpose was to rally public opinion in favor of his Iraq policy, proposed no change of course and no timeline for concluding U.S. involvement. Indeed, with the exception of bulldozing the Abu Ghraib prison, Bush offered absolutely no new ideas on how to deal with the huge difficulties the U.S. currently confronts in Iraq. Instead, he appeared to be relying on a strategy of looking stern and determined, saying that "the terrorists cannot be allowed to win" and comparing the American vision of "liberty and life" with the terrorists' vision of "tyranny and murder." If that all sounds familiar, it's because Bush has been striking the same poses and saying the same things -- to decreasing effect -- ever since the U.S. invaded Iraq, and, in fact, considerably before it.

This is not likely to be an effective strategy. The public has turned increasingly negative on the war in Iraq and, more broadly, on Bush's conduct of the war on terrorism. Simply asserting that we're doing the right thing and we must continue to do it is not going to turn those negative views around. Instead, since the public believes that the current course in Iraq is not containing, much less resolving, the very serious problems, proposing a change from that course was the only plausible way to turn public opinion in his direction.

That is exactly what Bush failed to do and why we may reasonably expect that public opinion will not turn in his favor. And public opinion now is remarkably negative.

Is Bush doing a good job on the war on terrorism? The Annenberg Election Survey has now measured it in net negative territory: 46 percent approval, 50 percent disapproval. That's a first and a very significant first. It means Bush's area of greatest strength is rapidly turning into a political liability.

Is Bush doing a good job in Iraq? The Annenberg poll has Bush's approval rating on Iraq at 39 percent approval, 57 percent disapproval, including just 33-61 among independents and 30-66 among Hispanics. The new CBS News poll has Bush's Iraq rating even lower, at 34-61.

Has the war in Iraq been worth fighting? On whether "the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, or not," the Annenberg poll finds just 40 percent saying it was worth it, compared with 54 percent who say it wasn't. The split is slightly more negative among independents (39-55), much more negative among moderates (30-64) and stunningly more negative among Hispanics (22-75).

Is the U.S. making progress in Iraq? In a new Democracy Corps poll, by a 55-41 margin, voters believe the U.S. is losing control in Iraq, rather than making progress. And the new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 65 percent of the public thinks the U.S. "has gotten bogged down in Iraq," compared with just 33 percent who think we're making good progress.

Finally, is the war in Iraq helping fight terrorism and making the U.S. safer? In the Democracy Corps poll, by identical 50-45 margins, voters believe that the war on Iraq has made the war on terrorism harder, rather than helped it, and that the Iraq war has made us less, not more, secure.

Turning these very negative views around is going to be very difficult. Based on Bush's performance tonight, I'd say he's still in the denial stage.

Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies and the CFR-Baker Institute report on post-conflict Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations.

With his speech, the president will likely win back some support from his base. He will assuage the fears of some that he does not comprehend the current difficulties or understand its ramifications. In fact, he took great pains to prepare Americans for an increasingly violent spring and summer. The president laid to rest any notion that the June 30 date would slip and outlined a political structure for the interim Iraqi government. The president's five points made him appear clear-headed and determined.

Unfortunately, Bush did not directly address the top questions of the day. What will sovereignty mean with 135,000 American troops, and possibly more, still in the country? Will the president hold those responsible for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal accountable, regardless of where the ongoing investigations lead? How exactly will the president get more international support? It's hard to believe that discussing "NATO's role" at the upcoming NATO summit will seal the deal. How should Americans define success and failure?

The most disheartening aspect of the speech was the president's determination to continue to link the 9/11 terrorism with the Iraq war. He backed off a little, by saying that "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror," but insisted upon defining "our terrorist enemies" in Iraq as those determined to impose Taliban-like rule country by country. Until the president makes clear that we have lost much support in Iraq -- not because of religious extremists, but because of a basic lack of law and order -- it will be difficult to fashion a truly workable strategy for success.

Sandra MacKey, author of "The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein."

The gap between rhetoric and reality in President Bush's speech to the nation on Monday night was like a walk with Alice through Wonderland. As he has done time and again, the president stood before the American people and lied about the reasons the United States invaded Iraq and the causes of the ongoing loss of life and treasure in a quagmire largely of the administration's own making.

He placed the blame for the violence that is likely to accompany the June 30 "transfer of power" solely on terrorists and Saddam loyalists. At no time did he admit to the American people that the bloody turmoil will largely be the result of a broad range of Iraqis engaged in the struggle for the right to define their own state, and to distribute political and economic power among themselves. It's a problem inherent to Iraq's own deep internal fissures, far less than it is a problem of foreigners attempting to import the ideology of al-Qaida, or of leftover die-hard loyalists from the Saddam regime.

The president outlined five steps Monday night to salvage the American misadventure in Iraq: Transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis; establishment of security by the joint efforts of American and Iraqi military forces; reconstruction of the infrastructure; recruitment of international help in policing and rebuilding Iraq; and administration of national elections. These are all valid goals. However, the president again failed to warn the American people of the real -- and daunting -- obstacles to those goals.

Either he was unwilling to share the truth with the American people or, frighteningly, he does not understand the real forces at work in Iraq.

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