America is losing confidence in President Bush. A Newsweek poll reveals that “across the board…his most visible policies only pull the support of a third of the country: on the economy, 35 percent approve; on Iraq, 33 percent; on energy policy, 28 percent.” When all else fails, start fear mongering. Some excerpts from President Bush’s speech today:
All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.
And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.….
With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation.
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No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
….In truth, they have endless ambitions of imperial domination and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves…They seek to end dissent in every form and to control every aspect of life and to rule the soul itself.
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Defeating a militant network is difficult because it thrives like a parasite on the suffering and frustration of others.….
[W]e’re determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and to their terrorist allies who would use them without hesitation.
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Evil men who want to use horrendous weapons against us are working in deadly earnest to gain them.
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This would be a pleasant world, but it’s not the world we live in. The enemy is never tired, never sated, never content with yesterday’s brutality.