Bush bets on battle of Baghdad

UPI - The battle of Baghdad has begun. And President George W. Bush is betting it is not going to be a rerun of the 1968 Tet offensive that wrecked the presidency of his fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson.

The president's impromptu news conference Tuesday was a gutsy and go-for-broke attempt to signal to the American people -- and the Iraqi people, too -- that he was in hands-on mode, determined to stay the course, steadfast and confident in backing up the embattled Shiite-Kurdish coalition government in Baghdad.

But Bush was betting on a long shot, not the sure thing he was promised for so long and still clearly believes in.

The wave of counter-bombings and other insurgent guerrilla attacks that has erupted in response to this operation does not have any of the characteristics of a desperate, last-ditch attempt to derail a successful political strategy, as the president insisted in Tuesday....