Count de Money!

I sat down to watch the President's speech last night with a great deal of anticipation. This speech had been touted as an opportunity for Mr. Bush to give us the straight facts about Iraq, the situation on the ground, and the strategy for success and withdrawal. It was also advertised as an arena for the President to speak to and possibly convert those Americans who have begun to feel and express (rather vocally) doubts and misgivings about the war's justifications, costs in treasure and blood, and management from the get-go. I count myself as one of those people, so you can imagine my excitement: the President was going to be speaking to me!

As I pressed play on my DVR (I had recorded the actual broadcast, both so my wife could watch it with me, and so I could back up and listen to importants parts a second time - just to make sure I'd heard it right.), I also took up pen and paper. On the pad I had written 4 entries: terrorist(or terror), Freedom, Liberty, and 9/11. My plan was make a tick beside each entry every time it was mentioned in the speech. If I were still in college, I would have made a drinking game out of this idea and I hope to God that on some campus someone did.

Here are the final tallies from the 28 minute speech:

"Terrorist(s)" or "Terror": 34

"Freedom": 21

"9/11": 6

"Liberty": 2

Now I'm not sure what the results of my non-scientific sociopolitical pseudoexcersise actually mean, but I do know this: the "terrorists" are who we're supposed to be afraid of. That is the whole reason for calling them terrorists. They are the reason for the Patriot Act, the TSA, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the war in Afgahnistan, the war in Iraq (apparently), and thousands of other minute and nuanced changes in our lives. The President's speech was 3,695 words long. Trust me, I know. That means every 108 words (or once every 49 seconds) Mr. Bush reminded us (covertly or overtly) of those that should scare us. No other word of substance (disregarding conjunctions, pronouns, and the word Iraq(i)) came even close to that count.

These speeches are carefully crafted, especially this one. Some pundits were proclaiming at the beginning of the week that this was the "most important speech of the Bush presidency!" The overwhelming use of these fear-inducing reminders can only indicate that this "opportunity for the President to speak to the American people" was never intended to give us straight facts, or explain to us what the real situation was, or answer any of the questions that have been raised throughout this war's execution.

It was intended to scare us back into our holes.

The boogeymen are still out there, and they mean to do us harm, and you better have some plastic sheeting and some duct tape ready because the terrorists hate your freedoms. Well that's a swing and a miss, Mr. President. I really don't think that tact will work anymore.

One more telling statistic before I dutifully go make sure my duct tape hasn't hit its expiration date: out of 3,695 words....

"victory" was only used once.