Bob's Advance Copy of Bush's Speech Tonight

Bush has to give a speech to bring people back onto his side on the Iraq war. When he's running a political campaign, he wins support by stealing his opponent's issues; he did this in South Carolina against McCain, for example.

So what can he say now? Here's the draft of the speech I submitted to him yesterday, I figure he could brush it up with a few jokes (see Derek's post, below) and it's good to go.


(ON)

My fellow Americans: Thirty months ago, the United States, acting under direction of the United Nations Security Council blah blah blah blah blah.

Let's skip all that. You know it. What I really want to tell you is, our boys are over there getting shot up. And we've already done our job. And it's unnecessary. I'm talking to you tonight about how I'm going to fix it.

We invaded the country, when liberals were saying that street warfare would be bloody -- and it wasn't. We deposed a ruthless, murderous dictator, and handed him over to his people to be brought to trial for war crimes. We handed sovereignty to an established interim government, supervised the constitutional writing process, held successful elections, and started to help train the new Iraqi army.

You folks can read. The Department of Defense estimated in August 2004 that there were 5,000 insurgents in Iraq; today, that estimate stands at 25,000. Last year in June, fewer than 30 people were killed in suicide bombings. This June, already hundreds of people have been killed in suicide bombings. And the quality of life in Iraq is estimated by the United Nations to be worse now than it was before we invaded. Any way you slice it, things are getting worse.

There's a good reason for it. As we Americans know, any time you put someone in the classroom and say "This guy's the teacher; he's in charge", nobody else in the room will step up to take any responsibility. If someone starts suicide bombing, the rest of the room says "Hey, I don't need to do nothing -- that teacher's going to take care of it." If bad people start shouting "FIRE FIRE FIRE" and freaking everyone out, who's supposed to shush 'em? Teacher. We've all seen this happen.

Nobody will step forward, to help the teacher out -- unless they're the "teacher's pet" type, and nobody else in the room likes a teacher's pet. The problem we have in Iraq is that we're The Teach, and we're trying to find a bunch of teacher's pets to take over the classroom for when we're gone. And you know darn well what happens when the teacher leaves and the teacher's pet is in charge: bedlam.

As long as we're there, no credible Iraqi leaders will step forward to lead the country. Why would they? It'd make them the teacher's pet. Iraqis are being killed left and right for being the teacher's pet. Why, just today, the oldest member of the Iraqi Interim Government was killed in a suicide bombing.

The choice is clear: we should leave, soon. I've authorized troop redployments, which will remove all 150,000 US personnel by December 10, 2005. This means, if any of you have children in Iraq, I'm going to be doing my best to have them home for the Holidays.

Good night, and God Bless America.