The Speech Bush Should Have Given

Here, courtesy of Juan Cole, is the speech George Bush should have given when trying to convince the people that we should invade Iraq:

My fellow Americans:

I want us to go to war against Iraq. But I want us to have our eyes open and be completely realistic.

A war against Iraq will be expensive. It will cost you, the taxpayer, about $300 billion over five years. I know Wolfowitz is telling you Iraq’s oil revenues will pay for it all, but that’s ridiculous. Iraq only pumps about $10 billion a year worth of oil, and it’s going to need that just to run the new government we're putting in. No, we’re going to have to pay for it, ourselves. I’m going to ask you for $25 billion, then $80 billion, then another $80 billion. And so on…

So I’m going to put you, your children, and your grandchildren deeply in hock to fight this war. I’m going to make it so there won’t be a lot of new jobs created, and I’m going to use the excuse of the Federal red ink to cut way back on government services that you depend on. For the super-rich, or as I call them, “my base,” this Iraq war thing is truly inspired. We use it to put up the deficit to the point where the Democrats and the more bleeding heart Republicans in Congress can't dare create any new programs to help the middle classes…

Then, this Iraq War that I want you to authorize as part of the War on Terror is going to be costly in American lives. By the time of my second inaugural, over 1,300 brave women and men of the US armed forces will be dead as a result of this Iraq war, and 10,371 will have been maimed and wounded, many of them for life…