Yesterday President Bush gave a primetime address to the nation on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The day before, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow assured reporters that the speech is "not going to be a political speech." Unfortunately, it was just that. Instead of focusing on the 9/11 attacks and our common national ties, Bush used the speech to justify his decision to go to war in Iraq and called on the country to support his "stay the course" policy: "I'm often asked why we're in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat." Last night on NBC, Tim Russert noted that after the speech, the President could be viewed as the "partisan-in-chief." "The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen, but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had 'nothing' to do with 9/11," said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA). Yesterday's address capped a series of terrorism speeches over the last 11 days, of which Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wrote that the President's comments were "superficially apolitical and personal, [but] his words were in fact carefully chosen to advance his agenda."
Once again the Decider-in-Chief showed us whats important to him...Politics and nothing but. This writeup is reprinted from the Progress Report, put out daily by ThinkProgress.org.
Tags: Terrorism,Politics,Bush,War on Terror
