By Eric Mader
A Disassociated Press Report, Washington,
January 22, 2004
U.S. President George W. Bush made a defiant
defense of his policies Tuesday and urged Americans to stick with his
leadership in a State of the Union address that provided highlights of his
administration's accomplishments during its first four years.
"We have not climbed this high over the
carnage of 9/11 to falter now and leave our work unfinished," Bush said in the
chamber of the House of Representatives before a joint session of Congress.
Only five minutes into his speech Bush
addressed the issue of his decision last year to lead the country to war by
referring to the fact that weapons inspectors in Iraq had found "dozens of instances
of cases where Iraqi officials clearly were thinking about beginning to try to
plan activities related to programs that could have been used to develop
weapons of mass destruction."
Bush also linked the war in Iraq with the
war on terrorism by citing evidence that two men who had once seen Osama bin
Laden in a parking lot in Yemen were known in 1998 to have traveled through
Iraq on their way to Kazakhstan.
The president described his nation as
"confident and strong," ready to face the challenges ahead of it and willing to
believe just about anything that sounded like it would make for a good movie
plot.
"America faces a choice," Bush said to the
partly sycophantic, partly grimacing crowd of representatives and Washington
bigwigs. "We can continue to snip
pieces out of the Constitution or we can turn back to the old policies of
respect for privacy and due legal process. We can boldly move ahead with our systematic erasure of
environmental protection laws or we can go back to talking about vague ideas
like biodiversity and forests and lakes."
At a time when Democrats battling for
their party's presidential nomination are lobbing attacks against him, Bush
defended his domestic policies by pointing out that Halliburton was a perfectly
respectable company and that the vice president had worked for it for years.
Bush also called for a renewal of the
widely criticized Patriot Act that increased law enforcement powers in the wake
of the 9/11 attacks.
Several Democrats drew a hawkish sneer
from the president by applauding when he mentioned that the act was set to
expire next year. Many Democrats
feel the act unnecessarily encroaches on civil rights.
At one point in his speech, noticing that
Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, was shaking his head in disagreement, Bush
departed from his prepared text and called out: "Alright, Kennedy. What's your problem over there? If you don't like what I'm saying I
suggest we meet by the bicycle racks after this little shindig is
finished. Whaddya say?"
At these words Vice President Dick
Cheney was seen to move for the first time during the proceedings. Slowly raising his head in the manner
of the Frankenstein monster and staring gravely at the offending Democratic
senator, Cheney said: "Yeah, Eddy.
At the bicycle racks. Just
you and me and George."
Bush also addressed criticisms his
administration has received for its more unilateral foreign policy style. Calling critics "liberal wimps and half-breeds"
he pointed out that America had by far the largest military in the world and
that in any case there was little that other countries could do if they
disagreed with his policies.
"As the prophet Isaiah wrote: 'There is
one rule for the lion and one for the squirrel,'" Bush said. "We Americans are the lion. The French and Germans and
Russians are squirrels. The
Russians used to be lions, but now they're squirrels. They're squirrels with nuclear weapons, but basically
squirrels even so. I sometimes
wonder about the Chinese though.
They're not exactly squirrels, but since there's only one lion now and
we are the lion, they can't be the lion too. So we're still unsure what to call the Chinese, but we will
find an answer just like we always do."
After the rounds of applause and
handshakes following his address, President Bush and Vice President Cheney were
seen scouting around the halls for Edward Kennedy, who had reportedly fled the
scene with his aides.
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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