http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/25/bush_reacts/index.htmlFree-falling in the polls, Bush stayed with the same tough-guy message. But Michael Lind, Karen Kwiatkowski, Ruy Teixeira and others say he landed with a splat, while AEI's Michael Rubin says the speech was "a good start."
May 25, 2004 | Michael Lind, senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of "Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics."
George W. Bush began and ended his speech with a brazen lie. He claimed that the United States is in Iraq to fight al-Qaida. Before the war, Bush, Cheney and the neoconservatives did all they could to convince the American people that there was some link between Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq and al-Qaida. They succeeded in deceiving a large number of Americans. Now Bush is trying the same trick again. He is trying to justify his failed and unnecessary war in Iraq by parading, once again, the corpses of those murdered by Osama bin laden and his followers in New York, Washington and Bali. The shamelessness of George W. Bush is matched only by his contempt for the intelligence of the American people.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/25/bush_reacts/index.html