"I'm not bloody standing up! Why should we have to stand up?"

The snarky British journalist sitting behind me had spoken so loudly that you could hear him over the tepid applause that greeted President Bush as he appeared on stage at the super-luxurious Emirates Palace hotel yesterday to give a speech in which he -- surprise, surprise -- lambasted Iran and waxed poetic about democratic change in the Arab world.

Apart from the peanut gallery of journalists, the audience was made up mostly of well-heeled men and women from the United Arab Emirates, Bush's latest stop on an eight-day tour of the Middle East. The cavernous auditorium was slightly more than half full, but I wouldn't like to hazard a guess about the crowd size.

Emirates Palace is so gigantic and extravagant that the venue easily could make a throng of hundreds look like a handful. A nice Englishwoman sitting next to me told me that she and her husband had come to check out the $3 billion hotel when it first opened a couple of years back and had calculated that a guest would have to walk more than a half-mile to reach the breakfast area each morning.

"But I suppose if you're posh enough to stay here, you'd have your breakfast delivered, now wouldn't you?" she said.

As Bush spoke, I watched the faces in the audience for any visible reaction, any palpable sign that the president's words had struck a chord with the Emiratis -- whether approval or disdain. You know how Oprah talks about epiphanies she calls "aha moments?" There weren't any. But, judging from the snickers of some nearby Arab journalists, there were plenty of haha moments, such as when Bush lavished praise on the Palestinians for voting, while failing to mention that they elected Hamas, a militant group the State Department considers a terrorist organization.

Symbolically, an Emirati woman with a PhD introduced Bush, as if to say, "Look at us! Our women can speak and drive and learn! We're not the Saudis!" The woman, elegant in her black traditional attire, spoke of strengthening U.S.-UAE political, security and cultural ties. She was proud to point out that the president had picked Abu Dhabi as the place to deliver his only big policy speech of the tour.

Well, let's see. Security concerns or diplomatic drama prevent Bush from speaking publicly in Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Gaza, Tehran, Tripoli, Algiers or Khartoum. The Iraqis might throw a fit if he picked archenemy Kuwait as the venue, though they can't exactly welcome him at the National Theater in Baghdad, either. Nobody's really heard of the Comoro Islands, Djibouti or Mauritania. Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco and Oman are so B-list. Qatar is too hard to pronounce (WHY is every Western politician and journalist convinced it sounds like "gutter?").

So, yep, Abu Dhabi it was.

Bush concluded his speech with a hearty "God bless," smiled wanly and exited the stage. There was a moment of hesitation, with the audience wondering if someone else would take the podium. A friend in Cairo later asked me if anyone had "pulled a Chavez." No, the Emiratis are way too polite to cross themselves and say they can still feel the presence of "the devil," as the colorful Venezuelan president did when he spoke a day after Bush at the UN General Assembly meeting.

Audience members filed out into a glitzy reception area where white-uniformed South Asian workers brandished trays of canapes and flutes of orange juice. I struck up a conversation with 20-year-old Nada al Harbi, an Emirati student who volunteers at the Abu Dhabi research center that organized Bush's visit. I asked what she'd thought of the speech.

"This was the first time a U.S. president came here and talked about opening the boundaries between the UAE and the United States," she said. "I hope we do open boundaries because we don't know what they're really thinking about us and they don't know what we're really thinking about them."

Gingerly, and making sure to point out the UAE's tentative economic and social reforms, I broached the subject of Bush's calls for democracy in a place where power is inherited instead of elected. Nada grew uncomfortable and laughed nervously.

"Our leaders have done a good job," she said, choosing her words carefully. "I don't really want to talk politics, OK? What do you want me to say?"

A Turkish journalist who is based in Dubai for a foreign-policy journal had sat to my right in the auditorium. She was excited to see Bush in the flesh. (Her verdict: "You know, he is not tall. And he is more heavy than we see on the TV. I thought the TV is supposed to make you look heavier.")

After the event, she saw me standing outside Emirates Palace waiting for a taxi, so she offered me a ride to my hotel. We talked about the highly unusual rain that fell on the Emirates throughout Bush's visit. I told her the Egyptian taxi driver who shuttled me from Dubai to Abu Dhabi had cracked that the rain proves "that everyone is sad because Bush is coming!" (What I didn't tell her: the taxi driver also had said, "Bush? Damn him. Now Saddam, that was a president!")

I grew up in Abu Dhabi, I told my new Turkish friend, and I didn't recall many winter showers. But perhaps climate change and all that global warming stuff has made rainfall more frequent in the Emirates?

"Oh, no," she replied. "In fact, this is the first time I've ever seen rain here."