"W" sets the record straight-AWESOME SPEECH content !

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are arguing
against critics of the Iraq war who are trying to rewrite history.
There is some value in this, but it is a fight about the past and not
about the future.

What most Americans care about is not who is lying but whether we are
winning. I offer this speech that the president might use to tell
Americans that we are winning.

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"My fellow Americans: We are winning, and winning decisively, in Iraq
and the Middle East. We defeated Saddam Hussein's army in just a few
weeks. None of the disasters that many feared would follow our invasion
occurred. Our troops did not have to fight door to door to take
Baghdad. The Iraqi oil fields were not set on fire. There was no civil
war between the Sunnis and the Shiites. There was no grave humanitarian
crisis.

Saddam Hussein was captured and is awaiting trial. His two murderous
sons are dead. Most of the leading members of Saddam's regime have been
captured or killed. After our easy military victory, we found ourselves
inadequately prepared to defeat the terrorist insurgents, but now we
are prevailing.

Iraq has held free elections in which millions of people voted. A new,
democratic constitution has been adopted that contains an extensive
bill of rights. Discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, or
politics is banned. Soon the Iraqis will be electing their first
parliament.

An independent judiciary exists, almost all public schools are open,
every hospital is functioning, and oil sales have increased sharply. In
most parts of the country, people move about freely and safely.

According to surveys, Iraqis are overwhelmingly opposed to the use of
violence to achieve political ends, and the great majority believe that
their lives will improve in the future. The Iraqi economy is growing
very rapidly, much more rapidly than the inflation rate.

In some places, the terrorists who lost the war are now fighting back
by killing Iraqi civilians. Some brave American soldiers have also been
killed, but most of the attacks are directed at decent, honest Iraqis.
This is not a civil war; it is terrorism gone mad.

And the terrorists have failed. They could not stop free elections.
They could not prevent Iraqi leaders from taking office. They could not
close the schools or hospitals. They could not prevent the emergence of
a vigorous free press that now involves over 170 newspapers that
represent every shade of opinion.

Terrorist leaders such as Zarqawi have lost. Most Sunni leaders, whom
Zarqawi was hoping to mobilize, have rejected his call to defeat any
constitution. The Muslims in his hometown in Jordan have denounced him.
Despite his murderous efforts, candidates representing every legitimate
point of view and every ethnic background are competing for office in
the new Iraqi government.

The progress of democracy and reconstruction has occurred faster in
Iraq than it did in Germany 60 years ago, even though we have far fewer
troops in the Middle East than we had in Germany after Hitler was
defeated.

We grieve deeply over every lost American and coalition soldier, but we
also recognize what those deaths have accomplished. A nation the size
of California, with 25 million inhabitants, has been freed from
tyranny, equipped with a new democratic constitution, and provided with
a growing new infrastructure that will help every Iraqi and not just
the privileged members of a brutal regime. For every American soldier
who died, 12,000 Iraqi voters were made into effective citizens.

Virtually every American soldier who writes home or comes back to visit
his or her family tells the same story: We have won, Iraqis have won,
and life in most of Iraq goes on without violence and with obvious
affection between the Iraqi people and our troops. These soldiers have
not just restored order in most places, they have built schools, aided
businesses, distributed aid, and made friends.

To take their places, Iraq has trained, with American and NATO
assistance, tens of thousands of new troops and police officers. In the
last election, there were more Iraqi soldiers than American ones
guarding the polling places.

We know that much remains to be done. Sunni and Shiite leaders must
work together more closely. We know that for centuries Sunni leaders,
including Saddam, ruled Iraq even though the Sunnis are only a minority
of its population: The terrorists began by killing Shiites but now have
killed Sunnis as well, all without the slightest moral justification.
But we know from America's own experience that when different groups
work together constructively, they learn to trust one another. That
must happen, and will happen, in Iraq.

Our success is not confined to Iraq. Libya has renounced its search for
nuclear weapons. Syria has pulled out of Lebanon. Afghanistan has
produced a democratic government and economic progress for its people.
Egypt has had the beginnings of a democratic vote. In an area once
dominated by dictatorships, the few remaining ones are either changing
or worrying deeply about those that have changed.

We know now that some of our information about the existence of weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq was wrong. But we also know now what we
have always believed: That Saddam Hussein, who had already invaded both
Iran and Kuwait, had the money, authority and determination to build up
his stock of such weapons. When he did, he would have become the
colossus of the Middle East, able to overwhelm other countries and rain
rockets down on Israel.

We have created a balance of power in the Middle East in which no
regime can easily threaten any other. In doing this, we and our allies
have followed a long tradition: We worked to prevent Imperial Germany
from dominating Europe in 1914, Hitler from doing the same in 1940, and
the Soviet Union from doing this in 1945. Now we are doing it in the
Middle East.

And we are winning. Soon Iraqi forces will be able to maintain order in
the few hot spots that still exist in Iraq. We will stay the course
until they are ready. We made no mistake ending Saddam's rule. We have
brought not only freedom to Iraq, but progress to most of the Middle
East. America should be proud of what it has accomplished. America will
not cut and run until the Iraqis can manage their own security, and
that will happen soon.

Thank you, and God bless you."

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Mr. Wilson has taught at Harvard, UCLA and Pepperdine, and is the
author, among other books, of "The Moral Sense" (Free Press, 1997).