  I don't have the ability, at this moment, to give much cohesive analysis of the President's speech tonight. Of course, his speech doesn't require much analysis, making my job easier. The President laid out five steps to a free Iraq.
I doubt anyone can disagree with these steps ("rebuild infrastructure") -- the real problem is that they are not steps, in the sense that they will mostly happen simultaneously. There is also nothing very specific here. We still don't know what body we will be handing "sovereignty" over to on June 30 (and we have no intention of handing full sovereignty over anyway, as our troops will remain indefinitely), the President lays out no real, concrete steps to achieving each of his goals. It's good that he's finally talking to us about his plans, but it would be nice to have some real substance.
Okay, so there was some substance, including the decision by Bush to approach the United Nations about taking part in the rebuilding after after June 30. International support in the rebuilding effort is key, both because we can't maintain 138,000 US troops in Iraq forever and also because we need to make sure that the "sovereign government" isn't being propped up by a heavily American force. American soldiers escorting the President of Iraq around looks more like puppet-government than free-and-open-Arab-democracy.
Let's hope the president is actually committed to internationalizing the effort in a major way. The President also gave details on the goings on in some hot-spots (Karbala, Fallujah, etc) which was much needed, if not exactly on-topic. This speech was decent, I suppose, but certainly failed to live up to its promise. And I'm still concerned that beyond some general and obvious statements about increasing Iraqi security, the Bush team may still have no clue what it's doing. 
