Helping The President Address the Nation

A former diplomat offers some friendly advice.

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Office of the Press Secretary

The White House

Text of President Bush’s Televised Address to the Nation

Embargoed until Tuesday, June 13, 8:00 pm

My fellow Americans,

Given all the turning points in Iraq that we have experienced together, my trusted advisors have urged me to speak cautiously at this triumphant moment.

None of us wants to get dizzy with success, after all. But I feel it’s important to share good news with you, the American people. We have reached a milestone on the road to victory and you deserve to know my innermost thoughts at this moment of momentousness. We are truly in a state of big Mo, as my Poppy would say.

Let me take you back along the glorious path that we have traveled together so far: On D-Day, we landed at Basra. We advanced speedily through the hedgerows of southern Iraq onward to the totalitarian Islamofascist regime’s capital in Baghdad, which we took.

Then, for three hard years, we faced our Battles of the Bulge: We bent, but we never broke. We captured Saddam. We — I mean they, the Iraqis — held parliamentary elections. In the Green Zone, we’re building the world’s biggest U.S. embassy, as big as historic Vatican City in Rome, Italy.

And now, just last Thursday, came the major turning point toward total victory in Iraq: two Made-in-the-USA 500-pounders from the skies got rid of al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist that bin Laden called the “Prince of al Qaida in Iraq.”

At 6:15 p.m. Baghdad time, Special Operation Forces, acting on tips and intelligence from good Iraqis, confirmed Zarqawi’s location, and delivered justice to the Gillette-hating jihadist whose evilness was proved because he couldn’t shoot straight with an M-16 and wore white American tennis shoes — a video from the Defense Department demonstrated this beyond the shadow of a doubt.

With Zarqawi now in Christian hell, we can continue our war on terror with renewed confidence and energy. We can pursue even more than before the main goal of this good war: to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, the evil WMD of all shapes and forms that threaten to ruin our country.

To keep Americans safe from WMD, I continue to ask the help of the Almighty. I pray every day that He give me, as well as the good vice-fighting Vice President and the good Secretary of Defense, leadership skills. Our prayers have been answered. We, blessed by Him, are your triple-punch access to safety, your home team against the axis of evil.

Thanks to God and our dedicated men and women in uniform, we now know that there are no evil WMD in Iraq. For that great achievement I also thank you, the American people.

How can I ever forget our joint celebration of our sacred shock-and-awe triumph in the not-good cradle of evil civilization! How can I ever forget when I landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, greeted so enthusiastically by our military and filmed so patriotically by the good folks from FOX!

In my flight suit, I could hear you all inside my heart cheering me on as you sat in front of your TVs. I could feel the goodness in your hearts, how you supported me and my good war. I felt good all over. Despite terrorists, revisionists, and all the evil people who have infiltrated this country — even as we send our troops to every border — I still do.

Our fight against WMD is now being fought here at home as well. The millions of telephone calls that our now-good, reformed intelligence community carefully analyzes give us more and more leads into evil WMD, actual or potential.

Let me cite an example of our success. The good Martha Hsubdam, of Topeka, Kansas, called her good sister-in-law Mary in Cincinnati, Ohio. She said that her not-so-good teenage stepson Joe, without telling her about it, was fooling around with an evil new computer “game” called “Terror Is an Error.”

Our good folks at the National Security Agency, always on the alert, intercepted that good-to-know-about phone conversation. Now, not-good Joe, who has acne because he secretly studied the Koran, is in a maximum security jail, serving a ten-year sentence.

Imagine what would have happened if not-good Joe were not behind bars: He might have grown a bad, smelly beard, joined the evil Al Qaeda, and started making vicious WMD with his chemistry set. He could have become a Zarqawi here in the homeland. But dedicated law enforcement prevented this. That’s the kind of good work that makes me sleep good at night, after I’ve said my prayers, read my Bible, and kissed my good Laura good night.

My fellow Americans, we are also taking steps to eliminate another type of WMD that we have discovered yet again in our midst on the eve of another good American democratic election — Women/Men Destroyers. These are evil people who don’t believe in our traditional good marriage of a man and a woman, the kind of marriage Laura and I are blessed to have thanks to divine intervention. These holy-matrimony haters refuse to accept, as I said recently, that “marriage cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious, and natural roots without weakening this good influence on society.”

My weapon in this good struggle against violent, non-traditional marriage extremism or VNTME is the Marriage Protection Amendment. Some not-good VNTME supporters kept the amendment from passing in the Senate this time, but we will never stop working to make it part of the laws of our good land.

Finally, my fellow Americans, we have not forgotten WMD overseas, even in the wake of our mission accomplished in Iraq and the liquidation of Zarqawi. We are now focusing on an evil country called Iran.

Trust me, I won’t urge the Uraniums to “bring it on,” as I have learned from my infrequent mistakes. Instead, here’s what your government, now better than ever after its heck of a job with Katrina, is doing even if such a new initiative sounds sophisticated: We are demanding that Iran stop thinking about making mushrooms dishes and start focusing on Rice recipes, at least for a while. If that doesn’t work, all options are on the table, including Texas barbeque with homeland-made Zarqawi sauce and Haditha seasoning provided free of charge by the Pentagon.

May God continue to bless America.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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