George W Bush's State of the Union Address (28th Jan 2003)

Despite expressing his will to arrange things with the United Nations by announcing a presentation of new evidence to the Security Council he still affirms that the USA will disarm Saddam on their own, too. In the following, Bush appeals to the troops surrounding Iraq; having explained how much America trusts them and how well he knows their risks Bush again utters his desire for peace. However, Bush also declares that living in continuous danger is no peace and in order to defend peace a war is justified as well. In the very last paragraphs of his speech, Bush again puts emphasis on the benevolence of America, which is - according to the President - a strong, honourable and selfless country. He concludes with stressing the importance of liberty, which he depicts as God's gift to humanity and asks God for blessing and guidance. .
             In the last part of his speech, Bush uses a lot of rhetoric devices, which could manipulate the audience; in the following, I will examine the most striking ones and uncover their possible effects on the listener. .
             Overall, Bush does his best to picture a military strike against Iraq as a defensive action for the good of everybody, to describe the USA in a very positive way as the world's selfless liberator, who is furthermore being part of some bigger plan of God.
             In the first paragraph Bush portrays Iraqi as "brave" but "oppressed" (l. 5) and lays emphasis on the fact that Saddam is Iraq's real foe by the parallelism "Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country"(l. 6,7), which is both entertaining and creating a contrast between the "good" invader and the "bad" ruler. Already at this point he vows to liberate Iraqi. .
             When examining the second paragraph, there is a little shift of contents as now Bush does not talk of a regime change anymore but focuses on Iraqi weapon programs. Connecting the fact of Iraq's lack of disarmament in the last twelve years with unproven assumptions as "its link to terrorist groups" (l.