Very good delivery for him. Hit all the rhetoric and made the pre-requisite use of the word "terrorists" numerous times. Has now backed off further from the "liberation" word and is now talking more broadly about democracy and making the world a better place. It is now a historic opportunity.

Here are some quotes and my thoughts:
OK, if you went into one of those debates with Al Gore and instead of saying that you were not interested in nation building, you said, "we should attack Iraq because he is a bad man and we should try to democracize the country for the price of hundreds of US soldiers lives and over $100 Billion because it will give a historic opportunity to change the world." He never would have been elected.

Way to go to find some way to get in the old WOMD charge. Too bad that happened in the 80's before the first gulf war. To bad we were supporting you and sending Donald Rumsfield to greet you as an ally at the time. I guess you believe that if you CLAIM he was a threat to the United States enough it must be true. But the best link you can get to terrorists is coddled. or 25 year old weapon use we supported at the time, or a local conflict to his country that he supported the use of suicide bombers in. None of this was a threat to the United States, and therefore NOT a justification for war. None of it makes Iraq part of the war on terrorism.

So if the Oil revenue is better than you thought. And you claimed that the Oil revenue would pay for reconsruction. How come we are going to pay over $100 Billion to reconstruction that you claimed we would not need to pay. That doesn't add up. You were either wrong or lying somewhere now.

Yup, we need to find these killers and bring them to justice. Too bad we can't do that because THEY ARE NOT IN IRAQ. But Iraq is where most of our forces are, hundreds of our Arabic speaking CIA and State department agents, etc. These are the guys that are NOT finding the guys that attacked us on 9/11 or the guys that are planning to attack us next.

So basically the point of the war now was to Change the world. So in other words, being attacked by terrorists gave the US the right to try to Change the world by attacking people not associated with the attack against us. Hmmmm. That is just plain F'ed up.

So Osama bin Laden is in Iraq? I don't think so.

So in other words all the questions were staged with the written questions submitted ahead of time and prepared answers. In other words the entire press conference was a staged event. Yup, he si too stupid to think on his feet. And he still comes out with "suiciders"

So then. The fact that Libya had already denounced terrorism due to diplomatic efforts and that in hindsight Saddam had not stocked, been building or even had the labs to build WOMD due to international diplomatic efforts means that all options were used prior to the Military one. Especially since UN Weapon inspectors were allowed unfettered access just three months before you decided to invade anyway.

The whole speech is revisionist history tailoring the current goals to the only respectable justifications left standing. And when you plan on turning over the government to a soverign Iraq in 10 weeks, don't you think you should have someone being prepared for the job already. Just one more sign of the unfathomable incompetance of this administration, IMO of course.

I honestly did not get a chance to watch it. However I hear the reactions I expected: Conservatives thought it was wonderful, (*)(*)(*)(*) near inspired by God, Liberals thought he fumbled, slipped up on several occasions, and was fairly contradictory

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Free Ice Cream!!

The change in rhetoric and approach in less than 2 years is substantial. Isn't it amazing what failure and a democratic Congress (double-entendre intended) can do?

You do know that the President does not write his own speeches, right?

Few modern presidents do.
You do know that he approves every word in the, right?

Okay, but why, when you are already questioning a President's intelligence, would you trust that he is "approving every word" instead of just skimming through and making sure the speech is within his platforms?

I don't question his intelligence. I suspect that its in the average range.
I question his judgement and ethics.

First drafts of Presidential speeches get generated by a team of speechwriters who pass it on to the senior writer. He/she makes adjustments and then the team tweaks the talk again. This process goes on until the head writer likes the product. The speech then goes to the President for his perusal. It could be that he simple trusts the product without studying it first but I highly doubt this. If he just skims the thing over there still may be problems.

First, he would be reading a long script cold. There is too much danger for him to stumble over a word or phrase. I assure you, he practices the speech.
Second, there might be something in the speech that he doesn't like. If he reads it to the American public before reading it over carefully first, then he'd have to go back and claim that he a.) hadn't read the script carefully first and so misspoke or, b.) stick with a policy he didn't want.

Personally, I think it would be scary if Bush DIDN'T support the War anymore and decided to retreat. Sure, there have been major mistakes in this war without a doubt but it still remains that we cannot lose this war.

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I'll never Forget. To pull You Closer is to Pull You Down. Ignorence can be an envy. Applaud us as the old American Power goes quietly into the night.

Stop being such a defeatist.

War fighting already been won. The invasion of Iraq has already been accomplished by the coalition military. General Patreus already said Iraq is now an 80% political mission, aka nationbuilding.

dicknbush need get their heads outta their neocoon asses and stop relying solely on the US military for solutions to their occupation of Iraq.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts