Leadership Quote by Jim Bunning

It takes a particular kind of political nerve to begin with “From watching the news” and end with “Our freedom is contagious.” Bunning’s line is doing two jobs at once: discrediting the mediating institution (the press) and laundering a contested occupation into a feel-good story of rescue. The opening clause positions the audience as savvy skeptics: you’re not being told the truth; you’re being misled. That move doesn’t just argue against negative coverage of Iraq - it preemptively immunizes the listener against inconvenient images, polling, and testimony by reframing them as media distortion.

The centerpiece is the rhetorical magic trick of “an overwhelming majority.” No numbers, no source, just a soothing supermajority that substitutes confidence for evidence. It’s an argument by atmosphere, aimed less at Iraqis than at Americans who need moral clarity after the shock-and-awe phase gave way to insurgency and sectarian bloodshed. The claim of Iraqi support re-centers U.S. agency as benevolent and wanted, a convenient antidote to the humiliating possibility of being seen as an occupier.

“Freedom is contagious” is the evangelical flourish: democracy as a virus, spreading naturally once America enters the room. It’s a metaphor that turns geopolitics into biology, implying inevitability and downplaying the messy realities of governance, coercion, and backlash. The final phrase - “we helped liberate them” - doesn’t merely justify the war; it tries to close the moral ledger. Liberation becomes the punchline that makes every preceding doubt look petty, even unpatriotic.