END  (CONT)

when a huge bomb exploded in Mosul. The casualties, according to a New York Times report, were "mostly children, women and the elderly."

"Americans are still dying at the rate of one every day," wrote Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman last week. "And violent civilian Iraqi deaths, according to the independent web site Iraq Body Count (iraqbodycount.org), have averaged about 1,000 a month since September. That's far lower than last January, but it's no better than in 2005, and it's well above the levels of 2004 - when Iraq was already in the grip of bloody chaos. To pronounce that reduction a success is like driving your car into a lake and then bragging when you pull it halfway out."

Bush managed all this with just the one 2003 SOTU speech. He's given seven of the things now, so adjust the body-count mathematics accordingly. Seven speeches. Seven years.

No more.

Monday night's speech was almost breathtaking in its lack of substance. He promised to bring the 9/11 perpetrators to justice, again. He promised to bring democracy to the Middle East, again. He talked up tax cuts for the financially solvent, again. He threatened Iran, again. He massaged the debacle known as "No Child Left Behind," again. He mispronounced "nuclear" at least three times, again. Basically, Bush could have just as easily been replaced by one of those high-school-chemistry-class projection screens showing some random video snippets from his other six SOTU addresses. Nobody would have noticed the difference.

There was no there, there. Again.

We have to put up with this man and his people for less than a year, or so most people believe. A story on today's Washington Post front page by Michael Abramowitz, however, reeled off a laundry list of pre-speech challenges for Bush that was capped by this line: "That is the problem Bush faces as he prepares to deliver his seventh and probably final State of the Union address tonight."

"Probably final"?

"Probably final"?!

Drink.

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