“éWe will act with the full power of the United States militaryé”
George W. Bush
On October 7, 2002 President Bush delivered a speech from Cincinnati, Ohio to the United States concerning the U.S.’ future role in Iraq. I have to admit that the speech was very moving with the much anticipated links between Iraq and al-Quaeda. However, the speech did not include any fresh information, nor did it provide any definitive answer to how we will disarm the Iraqi regime. It did play on the hearts of millions of Americans directly or indirectly linked to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
We have always known that Iraq has been planning to build nuclear weapons ever since the early 1990’s. This speech has just been a summary of recycled information and does not have any breakthrough evidence against Iraq’s plan for an attack against any nation, although Iraq is highly unpredictable when it comes to attacks. President Bush referred to September 11 five times in his speech, reinforcing the possibility of Iraq being involved with al-Quaeda. Bush also used words containing terror thirty-five times within his thirty minute speech. How many times did he mention Osama bin Laden? Not once.
The only part of the speech that I heard and understood was when Bush said, “éwe will act with the full power of the United States Military, we will act with allies at our side and we will prevail.” There is no doubt that we will indeed prevail, but how many lives will it cost us? The only alternative to war that the president spoke of was Iraq destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction and accounting for Gulf War personnel, which is hardly possible considering that it was nearly over ten years ago.
“The attacks of September 11th showed our country that vast oceans no longer protect us from danger,” is another thing Bush said, but that is not true. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, we learned that oceans no longer protect our isolation from other countries. Pearl Harbor was an event that had taught us much, but we still failed to learn from it.
It is time to wrap this sad story up and concentrate on what lies ahead. The president’s speech was well written with it’s use of words, but it lacked what us wiser Americans wanted to hear. It is an apparent attempt to stir the country’s emotions to gain support for his future military campaign against Iraq. Although I do feel that Saddam Hussein needs to be eliminated, I believe that if we attempt to do so we will suffer great losses.
Mr. David A. Garrett, Jr. is eighteen-year-old college student studying at a community college in Knoxville, TN, and intend to transfer to UTK to get his Bachelor’s Degree in journalism. He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).
