The focus of this article is on the war rhetoric of the Bush administration as reflected in the speeches of President Bush. What was explored is how presidential speeches drew on a variety of rhetorical techniques, from role-taking and punctuation to the adoption of the paranoid style. The purpose of these techniques is to nullify voices of opposition and preserve some political capital. The Bush administration managed to preserve considerable political capital through the prosecution of the war up through Bush's reelection. What worked was what the administration did as a whole. It is difficult to sort out how much of that was due specifically to the administration's rhetoric alone. The efficacy of political rhetoric generally is beyond the scope of this paper. What can minimally be said is that the administration's rhetoric was a large piece of an overall public relations strategy that for a long time was effective. (Contains 4 notes.)