Bush's Terrifying Terror Speech

By Robert Parry
October 10, 2005

George W. Bush’s Oct. 6 speech demanding “complete victory” in the “war on terror” unnerved some Americans who saw a president who looked and sounded like an obsessed sea captain charting the ship of state into an endless storm.

To allay some of those worries, we are offering the White House a draft for a follow-up speech in which Bush can speak straight to the concerns of his doubters. Like another draft that we proposed last summer, we don’t expect this one will get very far.

“My fellow Americans, I hear that many of you who watched my speech the other day came away a little spooked. Some of you thought I sounded crazy because I made it seem like we’d be at war in the Middle East forever.

“Some even wondered what it means to win a ‘complete victory’ over ‘terror?’ After all, ‘terror’ is an emotion or a tactic, so how do you defeat an emotion or a tactic?
[snip]
“Some of you also wondered how I could be so self-righteous, condemning some people who kill civilians to achieve a political goal when I did the same in invading Iraq. Some of you remembered those Iraqi men, women and children who died during my ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign at the start of the Iraq War.

“Like that Baghdad restaurant I had bombed because I thought Saddam might be eating there. It turned out Saddam wasn’t around, but we did kill 14 civilians, including seven children. ‘Isn’t that a form of terrorism?’ some of you ask.
[snip]
“Even though I have no doubt about the morality of our cause, some of you are still miffed that I told you we were going to war in Iraq because of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and his ties to al-Qaeda when it turned out there weren’t any.

“You also get annoyed when I keep saying that our enemies want to hurt us because they hate our freedom.

“Some of you insist that Muslims don’t hate our freedom. It’s that they view us and the Brits as their historical oppressors. They think we’ve propped up corrupt dictators for generations so we could take their oil – like the Saudi royals, the Kuwaiti princes, the Shah of Iran, even Saddam Hussein when my dad was in office.
[snip]
“Well, I responded to these concerns in my speech, when I said, ‘these extremists want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace.’ That's almost the same as saying they hate our freedom...

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