Sorry, I have to get political for a moment (isn't that what bloggers do these days?).
I didn't watch President Bush's Iraq speech last night. I "old media"-ed it--i.e. read about it in the paper.
The President told us in his speech that Iraq and the war on terrorism are intimately connected. By repeating "9-11" and "Iraq" over and over, he was trying to associate the two in our minds. Why not? It worked before, even though there has never been a shred of evidence that Iraq (under Saddam) was involved in 9-11.
You may recall that, in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush and his spokes-minions embarked on a subliminal rhetorical campaign to make us think that Saddam was behind 9-11. They kept repeating "9-11" and "Iraq" over and over, like Bush did last night, until nearly half of Americans polled thought Saddam WAS involved, despite the lack of evidence.
The fact is Bush started planning the invasion of Iraq on 9-12, using 9-11 as a pretext. "Fixing the intelligence," in the language of the "Downing Street Memo," began at that point. And that's when "9-11" and "Saddam" began appearing in the same sentence in speeches and press conferences.
Of course, now it's true: Iraq has become a terrorist training ground. But it's a training ground which the U.S. created by invading and occupying Iraq. Iraq was a non-existent terrorist threat before and after 9-11, and now it's terrorist-central. Self-fulfilling prophecy at its finest.
Will we fall for it this time? The American people seem much less patient with Bush this time around, but I for one am very respectful of the effectiveness of Karl Rove-style disinformation campaigns. Time to start tracking the verbal juxtaposition of "9-11" and "Iraq" again...
It seems I am 0-for-June.
The semester is over, my seminar paper done, a deadline for work met, I've run out of excuses.
I've decided that I can afford 15 minutes a day, five days a week, to blog. So instead of big bunches of entries, how about one a day? (or a couple if I can't help myself).
Let's see how long this resolution lasts.