Bush Speaks (pt. 3)

I would have posted more instant reaction last night, but I was called away on an emergency appliance hunt, in which I tracked, killed, and skinned a 34" Kenmore Oven/Range, as was the way of my ancestors.

The result of this was that I missed hearing a good chunk of Der President's speech, which is actually fine by me; the guy's voice grates on me like Pauley Shore's nails on a chalkboard while I'm being punched in the nuts. To improve his public speaking abilities, the guy really needs to take some serious electrocution lessons.

Malapropisms aside, I took the opportunity to run through the transcript to do a bit of a word search and see how many times certain words came up.

Free/Freedom - 34
Terror/Terrorist/Terrorism - 34
Iraq - 34
War - 21
Security - 14
Progress - 7
Democracy - 5
September the 11th - 5
Violence - 5
Tyranny - 4
Difficult - 4
Complete the Mission - 4
Hussein - 2
Nuclear - 2
Liberty - 2
Afghanistan - 2
Oppression - 2
Osama bin Laden - 1
Weapons of Mass Destruction - 0
Mission Accomplished - 0

Total word count, by the way, was 3,635 words.

What struck about the whole speech was how uneventful it was. If you've been paying attention to the news (MSM or otherwise), you would have known all of the difficulties and problems that we are facing over there. Nothing in this speech was new, but instead a repeat of everything that has been said by the administration to justify the war. It was a near mindless litany of "Freedoms" and "Tyrannys" and "Terror", designed, once again, to draw a false connection between the events of September 11, 2001 and the premeditated attack on Iraq.

Bush goes through a whole recitation of tasks, that while noble, would not have been necessary if we had not taken pre-emptive action looking for weapons of mass destruction that do not exist. Perhaps the Pottery Barn doesn't have a "You Break it, You Bought it" rule, but we have surely discovered that Iraq does.

Perhaps most disturbing of all was the overly optimistic non-timetable timetable, in which Iraqis are supposed to become capable, independent, functional, and democratic. Let us suppose that this does not happen tomorrow... Next week... Next month... Next year. How long are we willing to spend to prop up a regime that may or may not work?

However, one part of the speech struck me:

But Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths. We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat, it is courage. And we know that this great ideal of human freedom entrusted to us in a special way and that the ideal of liberty is worth defending.

Now replace "Americans" with "Democrats" and Howard Dean gets some free advice for his party. Howie, please steal that part of the speech.