Victory Through Platitudes

I tried to stay focused on Mister Bush's big speech. He lost me fairly early on, but grabbed my attention back with this:

"We've gained the peace that freedom brings…"

Huh? I thought we were at war.

I took some notes. Let's see here…

September 11th, three times.

Evil. Evil men.

I'm pretty sure I heard him say "Gulag." Don't imagine he was talking about Gitmo, though.

I definitely heard him say "endless ambition of imperialism." Surely he wasn't referring to himself. Was he?

He knocked somebody for "growing up in wealth and privilege. He must have been talking about bin Laden, huh?

He said something about "women's rights" four times or so, and "religious freedom" two or three times.

He used "tyrants and would be tyrants" to start three sentences in a row. Do you think his staff wrote the speech that way?

Sacrifice… Sacrifice… Sacrifice…

Freedom… Freedom… Freedom…

Oh, this was good. He made scary noises about states that sponsor freedom, and rattled his chain at Syria and Iran. No mention of Saudi Arabia, though.

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I sensed that there was supposed to be an explanation of some sort of a "five part" strategy, but I didn't hear anything that seemed to explain any strategy at all.

From the sound of the post-game show, I guess I wasn't alone in that regard. MSNBC's Randy Something asked two pundits if we'd heard anything new about the strategy in Iraq.

Retired General Barry McCaffrey said:

"Yeah… You're right, this was not breaking new ground."

Dana Priest of the WaPo sighed:

"Not really anything."

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Mister Bush continues promising to give us substance and leaving us with nothing but platitudes and slogans. I'm starting to think that he's been getting by on bunk for so long that he doesn't actually know what substance is.