Waging War and Saving Souls

And this too is from today's White House Briefing by Dan Froomkin.

Read it carefully.

No, don't get hung up on what are the probably unavoidable glitches that come with extemporaneous speaking. Everybody makes these performance errors. Don't get caught up thinking about them.

Look at what W is actually saying here:

Here's video of a largely overlooked interview Bush had with conservative CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow on Friday.

Kudlow asked Bush to comment on the new movie, "United 93," about the September 11 uprising on a United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Bush said he hadn't seen the movie, but said he agreed with the description of David Beamer , whose son Todd died in the crash, and who recently called the uprising the "first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war--World War III."

Said Bush: "I believe that. I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III."

[edited bit about another, earlier, speech]

In the Kudlow interview, Bush continued, somewhat unintelligibly: "War is terrible. But it, war brings out, you know, in some ways it it it it touches the core of Americans who volunteer to go in to combat to protect their, their souls. It touches something unique I think about our country that there are people who in the face of danger say 'I want to help. I want to, I want to save lives. I want to, uh, serve my country.' And, um, we see that here. We've seen that throughout our nation's history. And we're seeing it here in the 21st century."

[emphasis mine]

War as a way to "touch the core of Americans".

And war as a way "to save lives".

Scary stuff.