PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPEECH

This morning I watched the whole of President Obama's address to the nation on the formal ending of combat operations in Iraq, all 18 minutes of it.

Overall, I was disappointed. The President is quite clearly a very gifted orator. But oratory is only fine if you have something meaty to say. His style worked as a candidate and at the beginning of his term, since everything was then still in the future. The future is now the present, and style is no substitute for concrete actions. There was a lot of upbeat talk about ending Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqis taking over their own security, the U.S. being a partner for the future. There was nothing about - as I said earlier - continuing bomb attacks and the complete absence of an Iraqi Government. Nor about the festering sore of the prison at Guantanamo Bay (which, let us remember, Mr. Obama had promised, in one of his first actions as President, to disband by the beginning of 2010).

One thing for me summed up the divergence between talk and reality. At the end of the speech, there was a long homily about the withdrawal of the 4th Stryker Brigade, the last U.S. combat force in Iraq, across the border to Kuwait in the dead of night, and the contrast between the dark of the night and the light of the future represented by the handing over of security to the Iraqis. The Brigade, during its tour of duty, lost 55 men killed. On the same BBC webpage that showed the President's speech, a report from Pakistan said that at least 45 people had been killed in an attack on militants in the tribal areas of the country near the Afghanistan border. However much the President may wish the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to end, and however much he may say that they are being won, I fear that they are not. The killing in both countries will go on for a while yet.

Walter Blotscher