By my count, the Commander-in-Chief used the phrase 'al Qaida' a total of 87 different times yesterday during his speech at the U.S. Air Force base in Charleston, South Carolina.  (Others have come up with even higher estimates: At one point yesterday, CNN estimated 93 times.)   Since the White House's transcript of the speech totals approx. 3,600 words, this means that the American President uttered the phrase 'al Qaida' (which counts as two words, incidentally) once every 41 words (roughly).  Insofar as the so-called War on Terror and Defense of the Homeland go, this might be the all-time record.  (Though I admit to not having checked very many of the speeches delivered by Dick Cheney over the past six years or so.  Or everything associated with the Department of Homeland Security.  Or the news reports and commentaries that stream across the FOX News Channel, the Weekly Standard, and similar venues.) 

As David Keen pointed out in CounterPunch the other day, the propagandist's Number One weapon is repetition: "repeat your message often enough and people will believe it."  No less an expert in the craft than the Fuhrer himself once counseled: "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. [Propaganda] must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."  Indeed. 

Given such profligate word-usage among the White House speechwriters responsible for drafting the July 24 beauty, it's difficult to decide which single passage out of the whole deserves to be highlighted the most.   So you'll have to forgive me for my choices.  (Both of which came near the end of the speech.) 

At this stage, I guess we can dispense with wondering whether or not any of it is true. These days -- and perhaps just about forever -- whatever is true around official Washington is true by some freakish accident -- the purely contingent correspondence between whatever the regime asserts for the sake of power, and whatever happens to be the case in the world on any particular occasion.  

Truth-as-usefulness is another matter.  And, therefore, a more practical question comes to mind: Whether or not all of the regime's efforts, taken as a whole, will by the waning months of 2008 prove sufficiently frightening to convince Americans to stand up and, in a single voice, to chant: Enough with democracy and the November 2008 elections already!  It's Bush-Cheney for as long as the Homeland is threatened and the War on Terror lasts.

We will see.

(Two brief excerpts follow from "President Bush Discusses War on Terror in South Carolina," White House Office of the Press Secretary, July 24, 2007. -- Feel free to nominate your own personal favorite.  It'd be awfully hard to miss the side of this barn.) 

And most important for the people who wonder if the fight in Iraq is worth it, al Qaida in Iraq shares Osama bin Laden's goal of making Iraq a base for its radical Islamic empire, and using it as a safe haven for attacks on America. That is why our intelligence community reports -- and I quote -- "compared with [other leading Sunni jihadist groups], al Qaida in Iraq stands out for its extremism, unmatched operational strength, foreign leadership, and determination to take the jihad beyond Iraq's borders." 

Our top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has said that al Qaida is "public enemy number one" in Iraq. Fellow citizens, these people have sworn allegiance to the man who ordered the death of nearly 3,000 people on our soil. Al Qaida is public enemy number one for the Iraqi people; al Qaida is public enemy number one for the American people. And that is why, for the security of our country, we will stay on the hunt, we'll deny them safe haven, and we will defeat them where they have made their stand.

….……..

I've explained the connection between al Qaida and its Iraqi affiliate. I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection. The facts are that al Qaida terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they are plotting to kill Americans here at home again. Those who justify withdrawing our troops from Iraq by denying the threat of al Qaida in Iraq and its ties to Osama bin Laden ignore the clear consequences of such a retreat. If we were to follow their advice, it would be dangerous for the world -- and disastrous for America. We will defeat al Qaida in Iraq.