The Shrub Addresses the CGA Graduating Class

The fearmonger-in-chief went to the Coast Guard Academy in New London Connecticut to deliver the commencement address today. (All the parts I listened to received tepid applause at best.)

Let’s just cut to the chase and fisk this fucker, shall we? (Without the happy-chatter and Bush one-liners – I just ate.)

Americans rely on the Coast Guard in times of disaster. When Hurricane Katrina hit our nation's Gulf Coast, the men and women of the Coast Guard swung into action, hanging from helicopters, pulling people off rooftops and out of trees, and rescuing more than 33,000 people. (Applause.) When storms and floods and tragedy strike, Americans know that they can count on the United States Coast Guard.

Yes they did. The Coast Guard stood head and shoulders above everyone else at that moment in our history, and one particular Coast Guard Officer risked his career to save lives, because the orders authorizing intervention were not forthcoming. So yes, the Hurricane survivors owe a debt of gratitude to the Coast Guard, but it is in spite of your punk ass.

You'll need all this training to help keep your fellow citizens safe. In this war, we face a brutal enemy that has already killed thousands in our midst, and is determined to bring even greater destruction to our shores. We're blessed that there has not been another terrorist attack on our homeland in the past five-and-a-half years. This is not for lack of effort on the part of the enemy. Since 9/11, al Qaeda and its allies have succeeded in carrying out horrific attacks across the world; al Qaeda leaders have repeatedly made clear they intend to strike our country again.

So where is Osama “to tell you the truth I just don’t think about him that much” bin Laden these days, anyway?

In January of last year, Osama bin Laden warned the American people: "Operations are under preparation and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished." Seven months later, British authorities broke up the most ambitious known al Qaeda threat to the homeland since the 9/11 attacks: a plot to blow up passenger airplanes flying to America. Our intelligence community believes that this plot was just two or three weeks away from execution. If it had been carried out, it could have rivaled 9/11 in death and destruction.

Just yesterday the Resident declassified this information, expressly so he could use it in his fear-mongering diatribe in New London. (How conveeenyent.) Declassify yesterday and flog today before any proper scrutiny can be applied to determine if he is lying his ass off again.

You remember his reaction to the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing titled bin Laden determined to strike within U.S. – he smirked and said “Okay. You’ve covered your ass now.” And resumed clearing brush. (No one could have imagined….)

To help stop new attacks on our country, we have undertaken the most sweeping reorganization of the federal government since the start of the Cold War. We created the new Department of Homeland Security, merging 22 different government organizations, including the Coast Guard, into a single Department with a clear mission: to protect America from future attacks.

Ask the residents of New Orleans what they think of this “restructuring” and I bet you’ll get your hat knocked in the creek.

All these steps are making our country safer, but we're not yet safe. To strike our country, the terrorists only have to be right once; to protect our country, we have to be right 100% of the time. That means the best way to protect our people is to take the fight to the enemy. So after 9/11, I vowed to America that we would go on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them across the world so we do not have to face them here at home. And since 9/11, that is precisely what that United States of America has done.

Backing off at Tora Bora and letting bin Laden abscond a part of that brilliant plan?

In Afghanistan, we removed a regime that gave sanctuary and support to al Qaeda as they planned the 9/11 attacks. Today, because we acted, the terrorist camps in Afghanistan have been shut down, 25 million people have been liberated, and the Afghan people have an elected government that is fighting terrorists, instead of harboring them.

The Taliban and al Qaeda are seeking to roll back Afghanistan's democratic progress -- but forces from 40 nations, including every member of NATO, are helping the Afghan people defend their democratic gains. Earlier this month, Afghan, American, and NATO forces tracked down and killed a top Taliban commander in Afghanistan. His death has sent a clear message to all who would challenge Afghanistan's young democracy: We drove al Qaeda and the Taliban out of power, and they're not going to be allowed to return to power.

So that’s why we are fighting in Iraq. Clears that right the fuck up…

In Iraq, we removed a cruel dictator who harbored terrorists, paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, invaded his neighbors, defied the United Nations Security Council, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction. Iraq, the United States and the world are better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

And was no threat to us. Not only that but anyone with a sense of world events can point to many worse offenders who haven’t been deposed by U.S. led forces. But then, those countries aren’t sitting on top of the third-largest oil reserve in the world.

And today the Iraqi people are building a young democracy on the rubble of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. In December 2005, nearly 12 million Iraqis demonstrated their desire to be free, going to the polls and choosing a new government under the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world.

The Iraqi “government” is probably about to fall. The only thing the parliament can agree on is that the United States should leave.

There is a reason that bin Laden believes that if al Qaeda can drive us out, they can establish Iraq as a new terrorist sanctuary. Our intelligence community believes that, "al Qaeda leaders see victory in Iraq -- the heart of the caliphate and currently the most active front in their war -- as a religious and strategic imperative." If al Qaeda succeeds in Iraq, they would pursue their stated goals of turning that nation into a base from which to overthrow moderate governments in the region, impose their hateful ideology on millions, and launch new attacks on America and other nations. Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden -- and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America.

Yeah…Sunni militant al Qae’da is going to take over Shi’ite Iraq. Only in the non-functioning melon that sits atop the shrubs neck, and in the mind of a very few foam-flecked idiots who drank deep of the Raspberry Red.

(And we are all getting ponies for Christmas!!!)

The fight in Iraq is tough, but my point today to you is the fight is essential to our security -- al Qaeda's leaders inside and outside of Iraq have not given up on their objective of attacking America again. Now, many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam. There are many differences between the two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people, we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don't have to fight them where we live.

Okay, the bile is rising. What, exactly, does this pussy know about “tough fights”? He finished his hitch snorting coke off a stripper’s ass in the back of a titty-bar in Houston.

The part he leaves out is that terrorism is a tactic that has been used by the outgunned for centuries. We are always going to be a target of terrorism. That is reality. So what is this fuckwit’s solution? Make more terrorists by destabilizing the entire fucking middle east with feckless and reckless abandon! (The idiot twits aren’t over there, so what the fuck? Run amok!)

The question for our elected leaders is: Do we comprehend the danger of an al Qaeda victory in Iraq, and will we do what it takes to stop them? However difficult the fight in Iraq has become, we must win it. Al Qaeda is public enemy number one for Iraq's young democracy, and al Qaeda is public enemy number one for America, as well. And that is why we must support our troops, we must support the Iraqi government, and we must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq.

Al Qaeda is not enemy number one in the mind of anyone whose brain has not been turned to mush by years of Cocaine and alcohol abuse.. They are a scare tactic used by a petty little warmonger with Daddy issues and no skin in the game. If the U.S. left Iraq tomorrow, al Qaeda would be gone within a week – either slaughtered brutally by pissed-off Iraqi's, or fleeing with their lives.

Victory in this struggle will require valor and determination and persistence, and these qualities can be found in abundance in the Class of 2007.

Qualities that we wish our president possessed, but sadly, he wouldn’t know them if they bit him in the ass. But I digress and state the obvious. Victory in this struggle will require old-fashioned police work and dogged determination, and a reassessment of the world and out place in it. But that just doesn't sound as good, does it?