Bush the Perfunctory:
Four years, 3200+ dead, 24,000++ wounded, the fast track to a trillion dollars flushed down the shitter, the country begging for the exit strategy, and that's all the speech we get?

Five minutes or less of "Fuck you, fuckers, we're staying and I don't give two sheep shits what anyone thinks. Oh, and Congress? Gimme the money, bitches." He might as well have come out in his pajamas, grunted, "Talking points 3, 27, and 105," and shuffled back to sleep, scratching his ass along the way. Then the reporters could have consulted their handy lists of talking points, downloadable to their PDAs, to see which lines they needed to repeat again and again.

It was pretty much the same pattern as the last anniversary remarks: Bush told us who he talked to on the phone before saying how super-duper great the troops are. A little bit of 9/11 goodness thrown in for spice.

A compassionate man might have offered moments of comfort and promises of better treatment to the abused wounded, a wise man might have at least made a stab at an explanation, but Bush is neither wise nor compassionate. He chose the perfunctory route - no one could accuse him of missing the anniversary, but no one would remember a word he said.

Now the Rude Pundit's gonna celebrate four years of the Iraq war by downing Vietnamese food with a bottle of vodka from Belgrade.