Our troops will still be there. There terrorists will still be there. The media will still have an incentive to hype every setback and 'scandal'. The June 30 handover is an important milepost, but I can't see that "Iraq will disappear from public consciousness" overnight.

djs - OJ may be downplaying Iraq but it is possible/probable that by about Sept 1 the Iraqi forces will be taking on/taking out the terrorists, not US forces. The media can spin all they want but they need US casualties to push the stories - back in March/early April Iraq was fading from the news during the quiet period.
As for the poll this is FoxNews, charter member of the VRWC, so the poll is heavily slanted toward Bush and Kerry is actually up 10 pts (sarcasm off)

What the heck do you mean by "bogged down in a new Vietnam"? Been reading the NYT too much?

Out here in real America, the continual complaint about Iraq is that we turned tail and ran in '91--and that we should have taken out Saddam back then. The most common statement heard when Dubya attacked Iraq in April was "It's about time!"

Ain't nobody except the coast-dwellers who think that Iraq '04 is another Vietnam.

Ray - good point. Most of the complaints from the right are that Bush has been too easy i.e. Saudia Arabia hasn't been nuked yet. Kerry could get to Bush's right on Iraq/terrorism but it is highly unlikely and Kerry has no credibility on the subject, not to mention the anti-wars would go to Nader.

Ray: I suspect OJ of committing sarcasm.

As for our troops being there after the handover, they will be. But even before the handoff, we can see the terrorists focusing on Iraqi civilians more than US troops.

The Dems can only criticize Bush in the past tense on Iraq after the turnover on June 30. Kerry can't say "If I am elected, I will withdraw from Iraq immediately", because we will already be on the way out.

The economy won't be as much of a lock for the president as OJ dreams. There are already rumblings of a second-half downturn in the economy, and the budget and trade deficits are going up, not down.

djs:

Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador...

Robert:

The trade deficit has risen every month for twenty something years--we let them assemble the proiducts we design and then they buy our bonds.

If the new Iraqi government beginning handling the terrorists in ways the U.S. can't, expect the media here to begin talking about the government's human-rights attrocities by the fall, compairing it to Saddam's treatment of prisoners and demanding the U.S. step in and contain the Iraqis, while at the same time indicating that the attacks on the terrorists have the full backing of the Bush administration (no need to even mention Ted Kennedy will be calling for a U.N. investigation into the Iraqi government sometime before Election Day).

John,
Forget it. The media only cares when it's the US whacking them. When it's wogs killing wogs, that becomes a filler paragraph on page D4.

Witness, for example, Zimbabwe. Or Delmur(sp?) ()see--even I don't know which country it is.

Ray --

Under normal circumstances, yes. But between now and Nov. 2, much of the media will be trying to tag every story coming out of Iraq with the end line "...and it's Bush's fault." So any Iraqi government violence against Iraqi or foreign terrorists, including, say chopping off the heads of the ones chopping off the heads of hostages, will be met with both calls for Bush to reign in the Irqais, and accusations that the U.S. was directly to blame for such actions.