We will defeat our enemies, we will protect our people, and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty. ~George W. Bush

The speech was mildly interesting in that Mr. Bush spent only about a fifth of the speech dwelling on Iraq, rehashing the same old story he has told many times before, but kept coming back to the freedom-talk more and more as he went on.  Mr. Bush used the word freedom or liberty or referred to “free society”  or “free nation”/”free nations” on 18 occasions in a sixteen minute speech, giving him average of better than one mention of freedom per minute.  There’s nothing new in this, but along with the “fertile gardens of liberty” the above quote stands out as the most excessive sort of optimistic prattle.  Forget the fertile gardens and shining age of liberty for a moment, Dobleve–how about an effective strategy or the resources to execute it?  This was another installment in the “we shall never surrender” series, and contained none of the necessary information for how Mr. Bush is going to secure Baghdad, much less how we are going to reach the “shining age of liberty.”  Who writes this stuff?