News Intelligence Analysis
A Partial Transcript
Monday, March 20, 2006
From President Bush's Speech
in Cleveland, Ohio; the City Club of Cleveland
Question (unidentified woman):
"Thank you for coming to Cleveland, Mr. President and the
Cleveland Club. My question is that author and former Nixon administration
official, Kevin Phillips, in his latest book, American Theocracy,
discusses what has been called radical Christianity and its growing
involvement into government and politics. He makes the point
that members of your administration have reached out to prophetic
Christians who see the war in Iraq and the rise in terrorism
as signs of the apocalypse. Do you believe this? That the war
in Iraq and the rise in terrorism are signs of the apocalypse.
And, if not, why not?"
Answer:
Um..uh...er...(laughter from audience
and Bush)...um..uh... I....the answer is...I haven't really thought
of it that way, heh, heh. Here's how I think of it. Um...first,
I've heard of that, by the way. I..uh.. the...uh..I, I guess...um...I'm
more of a practical fellow. I vowed after September 11th that
I would do everything I could to protect the American people.
And...uh...my attitude, of course, was affected by the attacks.
I knew we were at a war. I knew that the enemy obviously had
to be sophisticated and lethal to fly hijcacked airplanes...uh...into
facilities of people, innocent people doing nothing, just sitting
there going to work. I also knew this about this war on terror
that...uh..that uh....the farther we got away from September
11th the more likely that people would, you know, seek comfort
and not think about this global war on terror as a global war
on terror. And, that's good, by the way.
It's hard to take risks if you're a small business owner, for example, if you're worried that the next attack is going to come tomorrow...heh. I understand that.
But I also understand that my most important job, the most important job of any president today and I predict, down the road, is to protect America. And so..uh..I...uh..told the American people that we would..um...find the terrorists and bring them to justice. And we needed to defeat them overseas so we wouldn't have to face them here at home.
I also understood that the war on terror required some clear doctrine. And one of the doctrines that I laid out was that if you harbor a terrorist you're equally as guilty as the terrorist. And... and, uh, and...so...uh..the first time that doctrine was really challenged was in Afghanistan. Now, I guess the Taliban didn't believe us, or me. And so we acted. 25 million people now are free. And Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the terrorists. (1)
And the other doctrine that's really important and it's a change of attitude. It's going to require a change of attitude for a while in that when you see a threat you've got to deal with it before it hurts you... heh, heh.
Foreign policy used to be dictated by the fact that we had two oceans to protect us. Even if we saw a threat could deal with it if we needed to, or not. But we would be safe. My most important job is to protect you (2). It's to protect the American people. Therefore when we see threats given the lesson of September 11th, we've got to deal with them. That does not mean militarily (pause) necessarily.
Obviously the first job of a president has got to be diplomacy. That's what you're watching in Iran right now. I see a threat in Iran. I'm kinda getting off subject here, not because I don't want to answer your question but I guess that's what happens in Washington. We get a little long winded.
But, now that I'm on Iran. The threat to Iran, of course...heh. The threat of Iran, of course, their stated objective is to destroy our strong ally, Israel. That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace. It's a threat, in essence, to..to..a long alliance. I made it clear and I'll make it clear again that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.
And, um...(applause) at any rate, our objective is to solve this issue diplomatically and so our message must be a united message. A message not only from the United States, but from Great Britain and France and Germany as well as Russia, hopefully, and China.
In order to say to Iran loud and clearly that, this is unacceptable behavior. Your desire to have a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
And so, to answer your question, I take a practical view of doing the job that you want me to do which is how do we defeat an enemy that still wants to hurt us. And how do we deal with threats before they fully materialize? What do we do to protect us (pause) from harm? That's my job. And that job came home on September the 11th for me. Loud and clear.
And I think about my job of protecting you everyday. Every single day of the presidency. I'm concerned about the safety of the American people.
(1): Taliban factions remain in Afghanistan, and heroin production has gone up from 74 metric tons under the Taliban to 582 metric tons under U.S. control, an amount equal to roughly 90 percent of the world's supply ( http://www.interpol.int/Public/Drugs/heroin/default.asp )
(2): The president's oath of office says nothing about protecting the American people. He swore on the Bible "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Sanitized transcript (edited of verbal anomalies) available at The Yurica Report
___________________________
Related articles of interest:
From 2004 - "The Jesus Landing Pad" by Rick Perlstein outlines the intimate and somewhat secretive relationship between charismatic fundamentalist Christian groups such as the Apostolic Congress, and the White House; and the outworking of this relationship in regard to US policy, particularly vis a vis Israel and the Middle East.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html From the current London Review of Books, "The Israel Lobby" examines the history of the unusual relationship between Israel and the US from the 1940s to the present. A lengthy but detailed and lucid analysis of how the historical relationship has led to the current status quo: AIPAC and other influences have so well insinuated themselves into Washington politics that US interests are often overriden to favor those of a foreign nation.
The authors are John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at University of Chicago and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. I give this article four stars for thoroughness and relevance to current foreign policy.
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Transcript
Bush Speech on Iraq in Ohio
March 20, 2006
Strategies, Communication
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