American President George W. Bush delivers his annual State of the Union address Tuesday evening. Usually an occasion of pomp, self-congratulation, and applause lines, this year’s speech is likely to have a far more sombre tone.

While State of the Union addresses customarily cover a wide range of issues, and this one no doubt will as well, a single topic — Iraq — will dominate public discussion of Bush’s speech in the days afterward.

The president’s address will follow by two weeks his January 10 primetime speech outlining the administration’s “new” strategy on Iraq. In the face of substantial setbacks in last November’s congressional elections, in defiance of the new Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, despite public scepticism on the part of many senior military officers about sending more US troops to Iraq, and notwithstanding poll numbers that demonstrate that the American people are losing confidence in his conduct of the war, the president on January 10 refused to concede his Iraq adventure was a blunder, and instead announced the dispatch of more than 21,000 additional troops to Iraq.

Early returns suggest he did not persuade many people of the wisdom of his policies. In a new poll conducted by the reputable Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 61 per cent of Americans said they oppose Bush’s plans to increase troop levels in Iraq. Even many Republicans are sceptical. The widely respected Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year, has called the president’s approach “dangerously irresponsible”, and pledged to do “everything I can” to oppose Bush’s new policy.

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