More to come this weekend on The Great Push-Back, the <$Ad$> White House's coordinated PR offensive (involving speeches by most of the foreign policy principals) aimed at knocking down criticism of the war, the failure to find WMD and the evidence of administration deceptions.

To me -- with only a touch of satire or irony -- the analogy is to the Battle of the Bulge -- a bold, but ultimately self-defeating counterstroke from a retreating army.

In truth, it's the White House's biggest exercise in up-is-downism yet. The question, I think, is how much the press and the Democrats will push back in response. The administration's great vulnerability now is its credibility -- whether it knows what it's doing or tells the truth about what it's doing. And on that count this new bundle of speeches offers a very target rich environment.