Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

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Saddam Hussein vs Osama bin Laden: Announcing the demise of your enemy

May 2, 2011 by Einar Thorsen 1 Comment

I was rather struck by the tone and manner in which Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden today, and particularly how it contrasted with that of the Bush administration when they captured Saddam Hussein in 2003. See below clips for some interesting rhetorical and stylistic comparisons…

Barack Obama: Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda

Paul Bremer: Ladies and gentlemen… we got him!

George W. Bush: Good afternoon. Yesterday, December 13th, at around 8:30pm Baghdad time, United States military forces captured Saddam Hussein alive

Update 6 June 2011: The video embeds have disappeared from this blog post following the site crashing a while back. Shall put them back up soon.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, iraq, Osama bin Laden, Paul Bremer, Saddam Hussein

Comments

  1. Luke says

    June 3, 2011 at 14:55

    Definitely no Bremer; I think this pic defines why: http://tinyurl.com/Bremerboot
    There was some interesting analysis done on the 'Presidential swagger' of Obama and others you might be interested in so, so I'll drop my http://www.commpoint.ca/Point/Blog/Entries/2011/5… for you!

    Reply

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