The ‘real’ George Bush?

So after his “surprise” press conference with the MSM people Wednesday morning, the Prez had a second gathering, with reps of the avowedly rightwing media, in the afternoon.
Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com wrote about that one, too.
Froomking writes that tellingly, while meeting with people closer to being his partisan soul-mates, “Bush made it clear to this group of supporters that ‘stay the course’ remains his strategy.”
So much for the President’s recent avowals– stridently backed up by spokesman Tony Snow(job)– that his mantra was no longer “stay the course”, and indeed it had been ages since that had ever been his mantra… As I noted here last week: “The President ‘at war’ (with himself.) Not a reassuring sight.”
Here’s the longer excerpt from Froomkin:

Even though the session was mostly on the record, Bush seemed looser than he usually does in interviews. The result was a slew of disjointed, sometimes not particularly intelligible, but sometimes deeply telling insights into his thinking about the war. It’s a heckuva read.
For example, Bush said he owes his conviction that leaving equals losing to Gen. John P. Abizaid, the Central Command chief who oversees military operations in the Middle East.
And regardless of his recent public attempts at semantic backtracking, Bush made it clear to this group of supporters that “stay the course” remains his strategy.
Here’s Bush, in his opening remarks:
“Abizaid, who I think is one of the really great thinkers, John Abizaid — I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to talk to him, he’s a smart guy — he came up with this construct: If we leave, they will follow us here. That’s really different from other wars we’ve been in. If we leave, okay, so they suffer in other parts of the world, used to be the old mantra. This one is different. This war is, if they leave, they’re coming after us. As a matter of fact, they’ll be more emboldened to come after us. They will be able to find more recruits to come after us.
“Abizaid clearly sees this struggle — he sees the effects of victory in Iraq as having a major impact on other parts of the Middle East. He also sees the reciprocal of that, a defeat — just leaving — the only defeat is leaving, is letting things fall into chaos and letting al Qaeda have a safe haven.”
As for “stay the course”? Said Bush: “This stuff about ‘stay the course’ — stay the course means, we’re going to win. Stay the course does not mean that we’re not going to constantly change.”

And in case you want to read the full Monty, here’s the transcript of this encounter.
It provides great and fairly terrifying insight into what might loosely be called the “mind” of the President… We see him “fearlessly” revealing himself as one of the annointed few who really understands what’s going on in the world while the ignorant “world” (or is it just the ignorant “MSM” portion of the world– hard to tell) remains oblivious…

my answer to it is, I see the threat, and will use American power to protect ourselves, and at the same time, try to create the first victory in this ideological — the first victories — in the ideological war of the 21st century. So, much of the thinking and decision-making that I do now is based upon my belief that we’re in this grand ideological struggle. It is a struggle between moderate people, and a struggle between ideologues who are totalitarian and kill to achieve an objective without conscience. It’s interesting, here in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don’t believe we’re at war. I not only believe we’re at war, I know we’re at war. My biggest issue that I think about all the time is the next attack on America, because I am fully aware that there are people out there that would like nothing more than to have another spectacular moment by killing the American people. And they’re coming. And we’ve got to do everything we can to stop them. That’s why I believe we ought to listen to their phone calls, obviously on a limited basis, one coming out of the country, and why I know we need to interrogate these people. That’s why we need the Patriot Act. That’s why we need to be on the offense all the time. Iraq is the central part of this global war right now. The extremists, radicals have made it clear that they want us to leave. You know, it’s an interesting world in which people are not willing to listen to the words of an enemy, but in this case, we’re able to listen to the enemy and find out what the enemy thinks and publish their thoughts. The Commander-in-Chief must listen carefully and take their words extremely seriously.
…I know it looks grim right now, but it has looked grim before in this war on terror. It looked grim right after September the 11th. It looked grim when we were so-called bogged down in Afghanistan. [As opposed to today in Afghanistan, George? Have you read any news from there recently? ~HC] It looked grim in parts of the Iraq fight, and it looks grim right now, because murder is the tool of some, revenge is the tool of others. And in this different kind of war, the propaganda of the enemy is brutal and effective, and it upsets Americans because we value life.

Anyway, go read it. It may be the frankest sharing of his thoughts on many of these issues– including Palestine, Iran, Hizbullah, and many others– that you’ll ever read.