WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402207.html?referrer=emailRepetitious, Yes, but They Didn't Cut and Run
By Dana Milbank
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Lawmakers, diplomats and assorted military types settled into their seats in the Ronald Reagan Building yesterday to watch President Bush's fourth speech on Iraq in a fortnight. A snap poll was conducted in the press section: Would the feature presentation be a new film, a remake with updated effects, or just a rerun?
In the end, everybody agreed: They had seen this movie before.
For the 22nd time in a speech as president, Bush said we would not "cut and run" in Iraq. For the 28th time, he said Iraq was "the central front" in the war on terrorism. And, for the 100th time, Bush promised that "we will prevail" against the terrorists.
By contrast, Bush's setting left nothing to chance: 24 flags behind him, four poinsettias in front, and top Cabinet members and supportive lawmakers planted in the audience. Yet for all the passionate words in his text, the president's delivery was muted. At one point he seemed not to be paying attention to what he was reading and ended a thought about the Iraqi elections in the middle of a sentence.
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Bush had reason to be dispassionate. His four Iraq speeches, though different in emphasis, were full of numbing repetition. Washingtonpost.com's Adrian Holovaty did a computer analysis of the four Iraq speeches and found dozens of phrases repeated in all four. Bush invoked "democracy" 83 times, "freedom" 68 times and "security" 75 times. The president invoked "victory" 10 times in the 30-minute address -- more than the six victory mentions on Monday but fewer than the 11 on Dec. 7 and the 15 on Nov. 30.
The most noteworthy bit of Bush's speech might be what he didn't say. Heeding Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's advice not to use the word "insurgents" to describe the, er, insurgents, the president dropped the term. "The enemy of freedom in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists and Saddamists and terrorists," he substituted.