NYT, p. 1: Making a Case for a (Bush) Mission [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

NEWS ANALYSIS
Making a Case for a Mission
By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: April 14, 2004


WASHINGTON, April 13 — Facing a moment of political peril unlike any in the more than one thousand days of his presidency, George W. Bush made the case on Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq with the language and zeal of a missionary and combined it with a stark warning that failure would embolden America's enemies around the world.

"We're changing the world," Mr. Bush said halfway through a speech and news conference that was largely an hourlong justification for holding fast in Iraq, no matter how the casualties mount, no matter how chaotic the process of forming a new government.

Drawing later on a line he often slips into his campaign speeches, he reminded a global audience that "freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."...

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(Bush reached) for the kind of language about America's moral mission in the world that seemed drawn from the era of Teddy Roosevelt, whose speeches he keeps on the coffee table of his ranch in Texas. He described an America chosen by God to spread freedom. He never used the word "crusade," which touched off a firestorm of criticism in the Muslim world when he uttered it soon after Sept. 11, 2001. But he described one....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14ASSE.html