The 5th Anniversary of 9-11Just who does he think he is?

So the president once again used the tragedy of the September 11th terrorist attacks to justify every lie he's told to the American people, every transgression of the U.S. Constitution his administration has executed and unleashing of unspeakable violence on a nation of Arabs who had nobly endured the tyranny of the despot who ruled them, and the cruelty of policies intended to starve the despot out of office. Non, mes amis, your blogstress is not surprised by what she heard tonight from the Oval Office, but she finds herself nonetheless enraged.

Vying for most audacious line in his speech is the president's quoting of Osama bin Laden's description of al Qaeda's offense against the West as "World War III." Mr. Bush failed to mention the use more recent use of that description by one Newt Gingrich, the disgraced former Speaker of the House. Also in competition, however, is the president's appropriation of Gingrich's "clash of civilizations" scenario, and the disgraced speaker's contention that, in Bush's words, the "war...will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious."

Once again, the president conflated the war in a Iraq with the U.S. response to al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, though, as Vice President Richard V. Cheney did, at last, yesterday on "Meet the Press," he did admit that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, your blogstress's favorite line in the speech was neither of those mentioned above. It was this: "We look to the day when the nations of that region recognize their greatest resource is not the oil in the ground, but the talent and creativity of their people."

Hello? How 'bout: "We look to the day when America and all of the West recognized that the greatest resource of the Middle East is not the oil in the ground, but the talent, creativity and historical legacy of its people."