President Bush, in a joint appearance with Tony Blair, December 7, 2006:

I do know that we have not succeeded as fast as we wanted to succeed.

President Bush on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer today:

Look, I had a choice to make, Jim, and that is - one - do what we [we]re doing. And one could define that maybe a slow failure.

So there you go. When he hadn't announced the new strategy, he said the old strategy was succeeding -- just not fast enough. Now that he's announced the new strategy, he declares that the old strategy was leading to "slow failure."

Translating: Bush may be responsible for some mistakes in the past, but whatever Bush is doing now is working -- according to Bush.