This paper exemplifies how monologic follow-ups function in George W. Bush’s War-on-Terror talk. The macro-target of Bush’s 2003–2004 rhetoric of the Iraq War (legitimization of the preventive military raid and the later US participation) has been preserved in the ‘follow-up speeches’, reacting to the deficit of the original legitimization premise, namely the asserted possession of mass destruction arms by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.