You kept that oath underseas and under fire

Bush visits the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose numbers he has worked so hard to increase: “You took an oath to defend our flag and our freedom, and you kept that oath underseas and under fire.” We have to fight them in Atlantis so we don’t have to fight them over here.

Gearing up for the election year, he set out the limits of acceptable discourse:

there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate... The American people... know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right. When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale.

So minor quibbling about the way the war is conducted is okay, but any discussion of The Mission at all is disloyal, and any questioning of how we got into this mess is dishonest. Got it.