Exclusive: Advance Copy of Bush Inaugural Speech
A White House source has provided this Counterbias correspondent with text of surprisingly-candid inaugural address
 

January 19 2005
Counterbias.com
Steve Horowitz

My fellow Americans:

Four years ago I stood before you on this spot and challenged all Americans with a call for civility, compassion, and personal responsibility. I promised you then that America would show purpose, not arrogance, in defending our allies and our interests. And today, we can look back and say with pride, "Mission Accomplished."

Today I stand here again, humbled that a majority of you, for the first time, have apparently chosen me as your president, and deeply grateful to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. I know there are big things in your future, Kenny boy. No, really -- I know it.

The past four years have been among the most dramatic and turbulent in our history. The attacks of September 11, 2001, took the lives of almost three thousand people, changing the world and our role in it forever. Outraged by a brutal and cowardly assault from fanatics who hate our freedoms, we endeavored, with justifiable indignation, to free Afghanistan from the yoke of the terrorists who attacked us. And we might have completed our task; we might have helped establish a true democracy in that tragically war-torn and poverty stricken country; we might even have apprehended the criminal mastermind of the September 11th attacks; had I not decided to divert our attention to Iraq, which  we now know had no connection to nine-eleven, no ties to al Qaeda, and no weapons of mass destruction.

But all this is water under the diving board. My concept of personal responsibility requires me to pay lip service to the conclusions of the various commissions analyzing our multiple intelligence failures -- often after first opposing their creation -- but not to accept blame for
the 1,350 Americans and uncountable thousands of Iraqis who've died for a mistake, who gave their lives in the name of my personal animosity toward Saddam Hussein. But let us not forget, this was a man who gassed his own people -- a decade and a half ago. Plus he tried to kill my dad.

Today, Iraq stands on the verge of true democratic elections, a goal to which our own nation can aspire. And we should be proud to be spending two hundred billion dollars introducing freedom to foreigners in another country -- money that could have been used here at home for student loans, homeland security, affordable housing, energy independence, environmental protection, universal healthcare, and strengthening Social Security, which, by the way, is in dire crisis. Nine-eleven.

But Americans are a proud, self-reliant, independent people who don't want their government intruding in their lives and undermining their freedom. For, truly, government has no place in the personal lives of its citizens, except in matters of religion, love, marriage, sex, birth control, and what's on TV. Government's role is to advance the goal of liberty and individual rights around the world. Just not here.

So let us never forget the message of nine-eleven, which is that fear, hate, and anger are unbeatable campaign tools. Some will say that exploiting a national tragedy for political gain is reprehensible, even immoral. Indeed, millions of Americans think my administration has been characterized not by civility and compassion, as I promised so earnestly four years ago, but by divisiveness, intolerance, and fear-mongering. I implore those Americans to remember that John Ashcroft may be gone, but the Patriot Act remains. And torture is still an option. Nine-eleven.

And so, my friends, let us move backward into a future that feels much like the past, when all white Christian men from the right families were assured a limitless frontier of enterprise and opportunity, and everyone
else knew his place. Let us always treasure an America that allows a pampered frat boy of strikingly limited intellect to attain the highest office in the land, as long as he does the bidding of corporate wealth and Christian extremists. That is the America I like.

Above all, let us go forth in the world with our hearts and minds closed, united in the belief that our extremists are better than their extremists, and confident in the knowledge that we spend more on weapons of war than all other nations combined. For, as it says in the Bible, by what means can an inadequate man take his measure other than the size of his spear?

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America.

Nine-eleven.

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