The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

I should note that the president says "yeah" a lot. Way too much, in fact. Someone on his staff needs to try to drum that habit out of him.

I left that verbal tic there, just the same, to give an accurate notion of the essence of Bush's comments. If it seems vapid and free of contentn ... well, that might be because it is.

Enough filibustering. Here goes nothing:

Intelligence is a vital part of fighting and winning the war against the terrorists. We need really good intelligence.

Again, I repeat to you, the capacity to have good intelligence means that a president can make good calls about fighting this war on terror.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I fully understand people — He's trying to avoid responsibility. I'm a war president. We've got people working hard in intelligence gathering around the world to get as good an information as possible.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Vital question.

Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world.

We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons. It's important for people to understand the context in which I made a decision here in the Oval Office. We can't say, "Let's don't deal with Saddam Hussein. Let's hope he changes his stripes, or let's trust in the goodwill of Saddam Hussein. Yeah.

What — in the war on terror, how do you deal with threats? Yeah.

We are welcomed in Iraq.

See, free societies are societies that don't develop weapons of mass terror and don't blackmail the world.

If 63 members of your family had been killed by a group of people, you'd be a little bitter.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. A free Iraq will change the world. It's historic times. A war of choice or a war of necessity? It's a war of necessity. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. The attacks on our country affected our economy. Corporate scandals affected the confidence of people and therefore affected the economy. Yeah.

I want people working. I want people to find work. I don't hold up people. I think that people — when you do hard things, when you ask hard things of people, it can create tensions. I've shown the American people I can lead.

So, he goes on about terror, war, weapons, danger, and intelligence — gosh, I wonder what his campaign's going to be about, hmmm? That said, let me give him points for bringing out how someone might feel if a group killed 63 of his relatives. A brilliant insight, that.