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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (27283)	9/9/2003 2:08:11 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Whenever a speech is made careful consideration should be given to whom the speech is directed, and what is to be accomplished with this target audience. To gain some insight, let’s dissect the speech. Bush begins by talking about “the war on terror”. In fact, after his greeting, his first sentence states that this speech is a report on the “war on terror”. This way, when he discusses Iraq, it’s because it’s part of “the war on terror”. Any one who knows about the PNAC, their plans in ’92, elaborated in ’00 and the glee from Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on 9-11, won’t buy this argument. So with the first sentence, you start to get a clue as to the target audience. It’s not the American people, it’s his supporters that he’s trying to reassure. It’s not those that are likely to “see through” the shams and obfuscations, but the uninformed and freighted masses. So let’s test this hypothesis by looking further into the speech. Following a flag-waving call to crusade, he begins by describing Afghanistan using words like “broad coalition”, and then he gives a list of early success against Al Qaeda. Then he switches to Iraq. Note how this “skirts” the truth. No mention is made of the fact that the “broad coalition” dissolved as a result of Iraq, rather one is left with the impression that the same “broad coalition” is still with us, marching on a crusade under an American banner. No mention is made of the fact that much of the early successes stemmed from the cooperation of states like Syria. And that because of Iraq and other neo-con pressure, Syria abandoned their strategy of cooperation. Again, the ignorant masses don’t know, and the die-hard supporters don’t care, Iraq is described as a regime that sponsored terror, and “possessed and used weapons of mass destruction”. No mention is made that any terror sponsoring was at most directed against Israel and only Israel, and the WMDs were all past tense. He then uses the phrase “Our coalition enforced these international demands …” This deliberately leaves the impression that he’s referring to the earlier “broad coalition” which is simply not true. As for the “international demands”, no mention is made of the fact that the UN Security Council refused to acquiesce to the neo-con invasion plan. Unfortunately, this post is already getting long, and we’ve only gotten started on the speech. Nevertheless, the MO of the speech is clearly established – carefully pick-and-choose from history, never outright lying, just deliberately misleading while “skirting” the truth. It’s possible to go through the entire speech in this fashion, but the consistent pattern becomes boringly repetitious – rally the supporters, and obfuscate the ignorant. JMO lurqer