ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes how leading media outlets framed the Iraq surge and their assessments of whether victory was on the horizon as Bush completed his final term and enunciated his endgame narrative. To understand Obama's frame of the US exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is helpful to review George W. Bush's narrative of why America had to go to war, what had been achieved over the course of his presidency, and the prospects for success. Bowing to the realities of an increasingly chaotic Iraq and ever louder calls to pursue a different path in the war, President George W. Even Iraq's harshest critics in the media refrained from carefully questioning the fundamental underlying assumptions of Bush's war on terror and focused instead on far narrower and more strategically based condemnations. The unsettling specter of a looming humanitarian disaster in Iraq gained increasing traction as Petraeus's congressional testimony approached and the general highlighted the possibilities of such a dreadful situation.
