(2005-12-19) — A subdued but positive President George Bush told a national television audience last night that challenges remain in Iraq and the sacrifice is worth it.
However, Mr. Bush’s own first draft of the speech — erroneously emailed to several reporters last night — shows that the president had planned a much more positive spin on the situation.
“Laura and I look forward to taking the twins to Baghdad Disney in the summer of 2009,” the president had planned to tell Americans who waver in their commitment to a free, democratic state in the heart of the Arab world. “After we get done riding Mohammed Mountain at Disney, we’ll stop by the Green Zone — a massive shopping and entertainment complex arranged around a fantastic falafel food court.”
The speech the president actually delivered last night came as a result of intense wrangling among White House aides and State Department officials. The latter felt the president’s draft “sounded an inappropriate note of triumphalism and American cultural hegemony,” according to one unnamed State Department source.
Mr. Bush had planned to layout his vision of “a day, in the not-too-distant future, when the Sunni Triangle will compete with Silicon Valley and Research Triangle in North Carolina to produce innovative technology that will drive the global economy to dizzying heights.”
“I look forward,” the president had intended to say, “to strapping on a new Iraq-iPod that’ll let me shop online for Mom at Burkas-R-Us, and politely interrupt my mountain-biking music with a call to prayer five times each day.”
While Mr. Bush declared last night that the forces of freedom are winning the war in Iraq, he had originally meant to paint a vision of a tourist hotspot where vacationing families will stay in luxury resorts and flock to historic battlefields.
“Here in the U.S., we visit Valley Forge and look at old cannons and muskets,” said Mr. Bush. “Some day, crowds of tourists will file through the Fallujah National Monument to look at restored antique HumVees, reconstructed IEDs and wax figure fragments of al Qaeda terrorists. The kids will pose for pictures peeking out of the replica of Saddam’s spider hole, and Mom and Dad will buy them the cheesy souvenir of the falling statue. And a moment will come during that fun family vacation when they’ll stand in silence, with a lump in their throats, as they remember the price of freedom.”
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1 Lunch 12-19-2005 « Basil’s Blog // Jul 30, 2009 at 8:40 pm
[...] ScrappleFace has the original draft of Dubya’s speech [...]
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