Bush says that his greatest responsibility is to protect us. Now don't you feel safe?

In his televised speech this evening, George W. Bush started out by telling us that his greatest responsibility is to protect the American people.

Of course, to George W. Bush, protecting us means sitting in a classroom calmly reading My Pet Goat while terrorists are slamming airplanes into our buildings. (Don't you just feel all safe and secure?)

He painted a very rosy picture of how well things are going in Iraq.

He also kept mentioning 9/11 and Iraq in the same breath, as if the two were related.

And, predictably, he went on to tell us about how the terrorists "hate our freedom" and "do not understand America", and how we're nonetheless spreading democracy around the world.

And he told us how our great progress in Iraq will pose a problem for terrorist recruitment. (Never mind the fact that our so-called "progress" in Iraq is already interfering with our own military recruitment.)

He implied that his record-low approval ratings are because we are stupid or misguided. And he implied that we do not adequately support the troops, and that we're not "patriots". So, he says, we just need to shut up and "persevere".

His lame rhetoric was not a big deal; we're used to it. The big problem this evening was that he gave his speech at Fort Bragg, NC, surrounded by solders. Soldiers are his props. That says so much more than the drivel he recites from his speechwriters.