President Bush Finally Speaks As Reagan Would

A fine Reuters article on President Bush's trip to the Mideast.

Quotes to take away:

"So as we mark 60 years from Israel's founding, let us try to envision the region 60 years from now," said Bush, whose popularity at home has been hurt by an unpopular war in Iraq.

"Israel will be celebrating its 120th anniversary as one of the world's greatest democracies", he said, and "the Palestinian people will have a homeland, a democratic state that is governed by law, respects human rights and rejects terror".

Bush said that "from Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies". Iran and Syria "will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory".

Al Qaeda, Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas "will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision", Bush predicted.

And this, about the survival of Israel as a nation:

At Masada, a cable car carried Bush up the towering plateau where 960 Jewish men, women and children committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman legions crushing a rebellion in ancient Judea, in an act chronicled by a 1st-century historian.

Bush, on a three-day visit to celebrate Israel's founding, and Olmert viewed ruins including a water collection system that sustained besieged Jewish zealots at the sanctuary.

"At this historic site, Israeli soldiers swear an oath: 'Masada shall never fall again.' Citizens of Israel: Masada shall never fall again, and America will be at your side," Bush later told the Knesset, to a standing ovation.

It's often said that President Bush is a buffoon and incapable of eloquence. Could've fooled me.