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Howard Zinn

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President Bush's Address, paragraph 19

Bush talks about “defending its territorial integrity” . when it is the United States that violated Iraq’s territorial integrity in the first place and continues to do so by its military occupation. He talks about “stabilizing” the region when it is the U.S. that has created the enormous instability thatwe face now. He talks about “the flow of support from iran and Syria, which is a way of dodging the fact that it is the Iraqis themselves, whether they get outside support or not, who are the opposition. It reminds us of Vietnam, when Nixon saw Cambodia and Laos as aiding the VietCong and launched futile attacks on them, avoiding the fact that the NLF in Vietnam dr ew i ts support internally.

I would take this opportunity to make a few general points.There was not a hint of emotion in a speech that sends young Americans to death or dismemberment or psychological trauma and dooms more Iraqis to endure the hell that we have created for them in their own countr. Not even the modest emotion of sincerity in a speech that could have been delivered by a robot with more feeling.

The only thing I could think of as Bush spoke was the Vietnam era song by Pete Seeger referring to Johnson’s insistence on escalating the war: “We’re waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fool says to keep on.”