I have friends, quite a few of them in fact, who always watch the president's speeches with the sound turned off.

Some of them have explained that there is so much pre-speech speculation and analysis that they know what he will say before it pops out of his mouth. It feels like a re-run. Instead, they focus on President Bush's body language, claiming that, undistracted by words, they can better spot the lies when his eyes shift and shoulders twitch.

Others construct a good-news speech by dubbing their own script of what they wish president was saying. "We are withdrawing from Iraq tomorrow," for example, or "Vice President Cheney and I are stepping down and will spend the rest of our lives tending AIDS babies in sub-Saharan Africa." A girl can dream, can't she?

My practice is quite the opposite. I usually listen to presidential speeches on the radio, to avoid distraction by irritating gestures or facial expressions. I made an exception this time. I flicked on the TV.

"This nation will not wait to be attacked again," the president said. "We will take the fight to the enemy. Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war." Shift eyes. Hunch shoulders.

Let's follow this chain of unreason, line by line.

"This nation will not wait to be attacked again."

President Bush mentioned the September 11th attacks, if I counted correctly, seven times. It should be clear by now that there was no link between Iraq and September 11. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, commonly known as the 9-11 Commission, flatly stated in its report a year ago that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda and noted that bin Laden "at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan."

Perhaps by "again" he meant a different kind of attack: an attack by Saddam Hussein with his lethal stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Except there weren't any, were there? The U.N. inspectors couldn't find any. Neither could we, after two years of occupation. It seems like the president has come to accept this: in the 30-minute speech there was no mention of these WMD, the original justification of the War on Iraq. That dog won't hunt.

"We will take the fight to the enemy."

If the enemy is international terrorism, or, as the administration is now leaning, fundamentalist extremism, the fight was not in Iraq, or at least it wasn't two years ago when this war started.

"Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others," the president said. "They are making common cause with criminal elements, Iraqi insurgents and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who want to restore the old order." The president openly concedes that the terrorists are not Iraqis and the Iraqis are not terrorists: they are criminals, insurgents and remnants of the old regime. Far from taking the fight to the enemy, we have lured the enemy into our fight.

And then the clincher: "Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war."

Iraq is the battlefield because the White House selected it to be the battlefield. We have used them and abused them. "More than 2,000 members of Iraqi security forces have given their lives in the line of duty," the president said. He didn't mention the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who died as a result of the invasion and occupation, an occupation that has attracted heretofore unknown terror to their nation.

We talk about democracy, liberty and freedom for the Iraqi people but when all is said and done we have used them as live bait.

I could have figured this out without being distracted by the twitching eyes and hunched shoulders. For the next presidential speech it's back to the radio for me.

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.