Bush’s great speech

  • Here’s the full tran­script of the speech I heard on Fri­day. But here are the best parts of it, IMHO. Good stuff, man.

    … Our debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hall­marks of a free soci­ety and what makes our coun­try strong is that our polit­i­cal lead­ers can dis­cuss their dif­fer­ences openly, even in times of war. When I made the deci­sion to remove Sad­dam Hus­sein from power, Con­gress approved it with strong bipar­ti­san sup­port. I also rec­og­nize that some of our fel­low cit­i­zens and elected offi­cials didn’t sup­port the lib­er­a­tion of Iraq. And that is their right, and I respect it. As Pres­i­dent and Commander-in-Chief, I accept the respon­si­bil­i­ties, and the crit­i­cisms, and the con­se­quences that come with such a solemn decision.

    While it’s per­fectly legit­i­mate to crit­i­cize my deci­sion or the con­duct of the war, it is deeply irre­spon­si­ble to rewrite the his­tory of how that war began. (Applause.) Some Democ­rats and anti-war crit­ics are now claim­ing we manip­u­lated the intel­li­gence and mis­led the Amer­i­can peo­ple about why we went to war. These crit­ics are fully aware that a bipar­ti­san Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion found no evi­dence of polit­i­cal pres­sure to change the intel­li­gence community’s judg­ments related to Iraq’s weapons pro­grams.

    They also know that intel­li­gence agen­cies from around the world agreed with our assess­ment of Sad­dam Hus­sein. They know the United Nations passed more than a dozen res­o­lu­tions cit­ing his devel­op­ment and pos­ses­sion of weapons of mass destruc­tion. And many of these crit­ics sup­ported my oppo­nent dur­ing the last elec­tion, who explained his posi­tion to sup­port the res­o­lu­tion in the Con­gress this way: “When I vote to give the Pres­i­dent of the United States the author­ity to use force, if nec­es­sary, to dis­arm Sad­dam Hus­sein, it is because I believe that a deadly arse­nal of weapons of mass destruc­tion in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our secu­rity.” That’s why more than a hun­dred Democ­rats in the House and the Sen­ate — who had access to the same intel­li­gence — voted to sup­port remov­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein from power. (Applause.)

    The stakes in the global war on ter­ror are too high, and the national inter­est is too impor­tant, for politi­cians to throw out false charges. (Applause.) These base­less attacks send the wrong sig­nal to our troops and to an enemy that is ques­tion­ing America’s will. As our troops fight a ruth­less enemy deter­mined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected lead­ers who voted to send them to war con­tinue to stand behind them. (Applause.) Our troops deserve to know that this sup­port will remain firm when the going gets tough. (Applause.) And our troops deserve to know that what­ever our dif­fer­ences in Wash­ing­ton, our will is strong, our nation is united, and we will set­tle for noth­ing less than vic­tory. (Applause.)


    Related posts:

    1. Heck­uva speech going on
    2. Bush nom­i­nated … who now?

    November 14th, 2005 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • The Par­son 11.14.2005

    I agree, Grace–good stuff. I would have liked to have heard this ear­lier; why so long in com­ing? And another thing: Even though I know how it would play in the media (poorly), I would love the Prez to drop the “my oppo­nent” gig and just say John Kerry. Call him out, George–and then bitch­slap him. He deserves it, as do the rest of the lot.…

  • Grace

    I heard that he orig­i­nally did list Kerry by name, but on one of the re-writes it got nixed. I’m not sure I under­stand why — was it sup­posed to sound more civil that way? I’m sur­prised Kerry didn’t leap on the oppor­tu­nity to try to get some lime­light again.

    I’m with you — this was a long time in com­ing. The recent news has all­l­lll been about how Bush’s pres­i­dency is in cri­sis and he’s mel­llt­ing, mel­l­l­l­l­llt­ing. What­ever. Maybe he felt like he needed to do some­thing, but I’d like to think that he finally just got fed up.

  • Nicholas Bai­ley

    I was so very grate­ful to hear this speech finally from a man I believe is fight­ing the good fight. I, too, have wea­ried of the Left claim­ing they knew it was a mis­take all along but the mean Repub­li­cans duped them. You know, they either should stand by their orig­i­nal posi­tion (a posi­tion held by the major­ity of the world) or claim they were clue­less and just agreed with what­ever the Right fed them.
    I was also grate­ful to find this on your site. Too often my fel­low Ortho­dox are too crit­i­cal of our Pres­i­dent not con­sid­er­ing the alter­na­tive. This pres­i­dent has more integrity in one speech than his pre­de­ces­sor had in two terms.

  • Grace

    Nico­las -
    Very glad to hear you say that. I have noticed the same thing, and I’m never sure what to make of it. But every­one has to fol­low their con­science, I suppose.

    Speak­ing just for myself, I like George Bush, and I think there’s a kind of great­ness in him that I admire all the more given that he is so com­pletely ridiculed by many, many peo­ple. I doubt that we’ll see such an unapolo­get­i­cally devout Chris­t­ian in that office again for some time, and I do think that it makes a dif­fer­ence. I dearly wish that he hadn’t seen fit to spend the way that he has, and there have been mis­steps, but on the whole, I don’t under­stand why Chris­tians (and other devout reli­gious peo­ple) would be cool towards him. Oh well.

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