9/11! 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!

Quotations from Captain Codpiece, from yesterday's speech in Utah (annotated by Yours Truly):

Our enemies have no regard for human life. They're trying to hijack a great religion to justify a dark vision that rejects freedom and tolerance and dissent. They have a strategy, and part of that strategy is they're trying to shake our will. They kill the innocent. They kill women and children, knowing that the images of their brutality will horrify civilized peoples. Their goal is to drive nations into retreat so they can topple governments across the Middle East, establish Taliban-like regimes, and turn that region into a launching pad for more attacks against our people. In all their objectives, our enemies are trying to intimidate America and the free world. And in all their objectives, they will fail. (Applause.)

Sounds sort of like the Christian right, doesn't it? For God knows THEY have hijacked a "great religion" to justify a dark vision that rejects freedom and tolerance and dissent. Their most extreme adherents have killed innocents (such as women's health clinic workers). They kill women and children by supporting Bush's war. Their goal is to drive nations into defeat so they can topple governments across the ENTIRE WORLD, and establish Taliban-like CHRISTIAN regimes. They most definitely are trying to intimidate America. But since people like C-Plus Caligula don't see it, I'm not convinced they will fail.

We will accept nothing less than total victory over the terrorists and their hateful ideology

Uh...how about you tell us just how you're going to do that, when 2 years of war have just GALVANIZED that ideology?

Reuters isn't drinking the kool-aid:

Bush went to war in Iraq in 2003 warning of a threat from stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. None were found.

Critics accuse Bush of shifting his argument for war when he invokes the issue of terrorism to argue for staying the course in Iraq. They point out that a commission investigating the hijacked plane attacks of September 11, 2001, found no operational ties between those attacks and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government.

The White House says the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda-linked insurgents shows the link with terrorism, although the U.S. administration concedes many of those militants have come into Iraq from other countries since the U.S. invasion.