After launching two wars, President Bush said on Tuesday he wanted to be a "peace president" and took swipes at his Democratic rivals for being lawyers and weak on defense.With polls showing public support for the war in Iraq in decline, the Republican president cast himself as a reluctant warrior as he campaigned in the battleground state of Iowa against Democrat John Kerry and his running mate, former trial lawyer John Edwards. Bush lost the state in 2000 by only a few thousand votes.
"The enemy declared war on us," he told a re-election rally. "Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."
[...]
Despite a surge in attacks in Iraq and U.S. warnings that al Qaeda is plotting another major strike, Bush said U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had already made America safer, and that his re-election would let him finish the job.
"For a while we were marching to war. Now we're marching to peace. ... America is a safer place. Four more years and America will be safe and the world will be more peaceful," Bush said. (Reuters)
UPDATE: "Annan Rejects Bush Claim That World Is Safer Now"
Historians will disagree to the extent as to which the war in Iraq made America "safer." Personally, I don't think that it made us much "safer" at all.
Posted by: Zog on July 21, 2004 12:16 PMThe Daily Show with Jon Stewart had a great bit pointing out the eight times President Bush repeated that America or the American people are "safer" due to his efforts in this speech: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/07/20040712-5.html
What I can't quite understand is how such a powerful rhetorical device like repetition of a basic theme can be so mishandled by a public speaker who was able to convince so many people to vote for him.
RealPlayer version of the Daily Show bit can be found on the Comedy Central website here: http://www.comedycentral.com/mp/play.php?player=realplayer&type=v&iquality=high&reposid=/multimedia/tds/headlines/9005.html
Lisa Rein has non-streaming copies here (for now): http://video.lisarein.com/dailyshow/july2004/elections/
