State of the Union speech.
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| Tue, 01-20-2004 - 8:48am |
In his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday evening, President Bush will in effect launch his campaign to be re-elected.
He will try to present the strengths of his administration but he will also have to address its weaknesses.
Mr Bush does not yet know which Democrat he will face. Iowa is only the start of the campaign. So he has to adopt a broad strategy.
His strengths lie in foreign fields - in the "war on terror" which he himself declared and in the assertion of the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive intervention.
One of his major themes this year will be that America is safer with him at the helm.
New focus
But the tone in this speech may be moderated. He is mindful that he may need to sound more flexible in how his policy is applied.
Take Iraq. It has not gone as well as he had hoped so he might emphasise the chance that Iraq now has to develop democracy rather than dwell on the removal of a doubtful threat from weapons of mass destruction.
According to The New York Times, he will single out Libya as an example of how pressure on a rogue state can force it to change course without war.
Libya has agreed to give up work on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and to allow full inspections.
By emphasising that Libya has been brought to negotiation not to war, Mr Bush will reach out to those Americans (and his critics around the world) who worry that his policies are too aggressive.
The phrase "axis of evil" first used in this speech two years ago (but dropped last year) is not expected to make a come-back.
Foreign policy, however, is the lesser of his worries.
Domestic vulnerability
A poll published by the Washington Post and ABC News has revealed that it is domestic policy which is his weakness, even though overall support for him is put at 58%.
He is ahead of the Democrats by 2 to1 over policies connected to national security, but he is running statistically even with them on other issues.
He has tried to remedy this in recent weeks and months, promoting, for example, policies to give prescription drugs for the elderly and legalising the presence of illegal immigrants.
The immigration initiative appeals to the Latino vote while not upsetting Middle America too much. The country has always coped with and has indeed been built on waves of immigrants who provide much needed labour.
So the speech will have to dwell in substantial part on the economic and social state of the union.
The rapid growth of the US economy (and the role in this he will claim for his tax cuts) will no doubt feature strongly.
But always at Mr Bush's back is the memory of what happened to his father.
He, too, won a war against Iraq but lost office after neglecting the economy.



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In the first Gulf War, Hussein invaded Kuwait, and we were there to liberate Kuwait, which is why we received so much help from the other Arab nations. They did not want Hussein to basically control most of the oil in the region.
In this war, it was about reigime change, and the Arabs were counting on Hussein as an ally in the event of any war with Israel.
I thought it was about finding WMDs that could be used to attack the US. Guess I forgot to read the president's mind.
The argument of WMD's was used to go in for a reigime change.
I read excerpts of David Kay's report and he said that the CIA missed signs about the infrastructure of the Iraq leadership, and if they had knowledge of this, they may have been able to find out that the WMD programs were there, but in total disarray.
I think we had good reason to go in this time as well. Just because the UN did not have the balls enough to enforce their own resolutions, mainly because France, Germany and Russia were all making a lot of money from Iraq, both above the table, and below it.
...and THEN how would we have justified the war?
I think this all goes back to the warped use of intelligence. The decision was made to go to war, then the administration highlighted only the intelligence which supported its decision.
We agree, then did Bush deceive the American people?
I guess you are one of the liberals who tend to forget the interviews with John Kerry and Dick Gephardt who both stated that they saw the same intelligence that the President did, and that was the information they based their decision to vote for the use of military force, not on what the President said.
David Kay says the same exact thing in his final report. He blames the lack of good intelligence on the CIA. He said that the President has nothing to do with that.
How did we get off message an on to messenger? No, I just don't believe the truth is that simplistic.
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