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The Vulcan rhetoric of crisis: presidential advisors and the War in Iraq

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The Vulcan rhetoric of crisis: presidential advisors and the War in Iraq

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Content THE VULCAN RHETORIC OF CRISIS: PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORS AND THE
WAR IN IRAQ

by
Craig Arthur Hayden

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

May 2007

Copyright 2007 Craig Arthur Hayden

ii
Dedication
To my grandmother Olga Erickson and my wife Jaime Lester. Their love, patience,
and belief in me made this accomplishment possible.
iii
Acknowledgments

There are many individuals who deserve my gratitude for helping me on this
monumental project called a doctoral program. I am deeply indebted to G. Thomas
Goodnight, my dissertation chair, for helping me complete my dissertation. Through
his patient guidance, I was forced to relearn how to both argue and write - the
essence of a successful academic life. I must thank Sandra Ball-Rokeach and
Thomas Hollihan for their steadfast support as both mentor and friend throughout my
graduate career. I am also grateful for the wisdom and friendship of Marita Sturken,
who taught me that it hadn’t all been done before. And I certainly owe a debt of
gratitude to Patricia Riley, who gave me opportunity, advice, and confidence.
Others at the USC Annenberg should be acknowledged here for their help
and support: Douglas Thomas, Joshua Fouts, Gordon Stables, Peter Monge, and
Geoffrey Cowan. Many thanks also to Abigail Kaun, Anne Marie Campian, Joy
Oaks, and Christine Lloreda, for helping me navigate the campus bureaucracy with
relative ease. Steven Lamy deserves a special mention. He both welcomed me to
graduate life in the International Relations program and was there to witness my
dissertation defense. My thanks.
I must also recognize my peers in the Annenberg program who helped make
this all possible: Elisia Cohen, Zoltan Majdik, John Kephart, Melissa Franke, Jeffrey
Hall, and Einat Temkin. Finally, I wish to thank my friends and family who
provided boundless support and encouragement. You all have my sincerest thanks.
iv
Table of Contents

Dedication ii

Acknowledgments iii

Abstract vi

Chapter I: Introduction: The Vulcan Rhetoric of Crisis 1

Procedure of Study 7
Justification for the Study 10
Crisis rhetoric within Rhetorical Movements 19
Organization 29
Limitations and Scope 33
Conclusion 35
Chapter 1 Endnotes 37

Chapter II: Cold Crisis Rhetoric, Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy 48

The Truman Administration: Promoting the Ideology of NSC-68 52
The First Committee on the Present Danger 59
Team B and a new Committee on the President Danger 65
Foreign Policy Advisors, Media and Public Opinion 70
Conclusion 76
Chapter 2 Endnotes 79

Chapter III: Paul Wolfowitz: Promoting Ideology and Strategic Doctrine 87

An Alternative to Realism 88
Signs of Crisis: The Limited Contingency Study
and the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance 96
The 2001 West Point Address 105
Imagining “Rogue States” in Wolfowitz’s Media Argument 114
The QDR and the Aftermath of 9/11 121
Conclusion 134
Chapter 3 Endnotes 137

v
Chapter IV: Richard Cheney: Defending the President by Arguing for War 147

The Iraqi Threat is Introduced 151
Defending Bush by Reasserting the Iraqi Threat 164
Making the Case for War 168
Reaction to the Vice President’s Speech 184
Conclusion 190
Chapter 4 Endnotes 193

Chapter V: Colin Powell: Establishing Consensus and Legitimacy 202

Powell Ascendant: From Outsider to Symbol of Credibility 205
The Iraq Agenda and the National Security Strategy 215
The Campaign for War in Congress and the United Nations 221
U.S. Intentions are Revealed 228
The “Ambush” and the Retreat from Diplomacy 231
Powell Presents a “Disturbing Pattern” 235
Reaction to the Secretary’s speech 240
Conclusion 249
Chapter 5 Endnotes 252

Chapter VI: Conclusion: Limits of the Vulcan Rhetorical Movement 266
Crisis Rhetoric and Transforming Foreign Policy 266
Wolfowitz: Architect of a Strategic Doctrine 275
Cheney: Arguing the Imminence of Crisis 280
Powell: Symbolizing Credibility and Consensus 284
Implications 290
Conclusion 298
Chapter 6 Endnotes 301

Bibliography 306

vi
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the crisis rhetoric employed by presidential advisors
during the lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003. The inquiry operates from the premise
that these advisors engaged in a rhetorical movement to forward the agenda of war
against Iraq. The movement concept is presented to situate presidential advisors in
the domain of crisis rhetoric studies. The dissertation investigates this rhetorical
movement through the public arguments of three key presidential advisors: Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard Cheney, and Secretary
of State Colin Powell. The study examines how these advisors played crucial and
distinct roles in the rhetorical campaign that leveraged access to national media
outlets and featured pivotal speeches in support of a war. These advisors elaborated a
comprehensive policy scene of crisis, increased the imminence of possible threat,
and legitimated the arguments for war through appeals to an international audience.
These advisors are shown to extend the implications of presidential arguments,
defend the president against criticism, and augment the credibility of the
administration’s arguments for war. The movement arguments are presented as a
systematic strategy of epideictic threat amplification that discouraged debate while
consolidating support for the Iraq war policy.

1

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Vulcan Rhetoric of Crisis
On March 19, 2003 the United States launched a preventive war against the
nation of Iraq. The start of hostilities capped an extensive campaign of public
argument to bring the nation to war waged by the administration of George W. Bush.
No Iraqi surprise attack or profound act of aggression precipitated the U.S.-lead
invasion. Instead, the war was founded upon a rhetorically constructed urgency and
inevitability - cultivated by an administration that weaved together a successful case
based on the “imminent” threat of weapons of mass destruction held by Iraq. After
the United States had defeated Saddam Hussein no such weapons were ever
discovered.
1
No imminent Iraqi threat to the United States nor evidence of significant
Iraqi connection with the Al-Qaida terrorist organization ever materialized.
2
The lack
of such evidence represents a stark contrast with what the administration argued and
merits further investigation. Which rhetorical actors stepped forward to make the
case for war and what kinds of arguments could facilitate such a large-scale
intervention?
The basic objective of the Bush administration was to translate the idea of
war in Iraq into a widely accepted policy. This was no small challenge. At the start
of the Bush administration in early 2001, the idea of a military invasion of Iraq was
largely confined to neo-conservative advocates associated with the Project for a New
American Century and the publishers of The Weekly Standard.
3
This group had
2

lobbied for the largely symbolic “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, that identified the
goal of regime change in Iraq to be official U.S. policy.
4
Yet the early Bush
administration found little interest in Iraqi regime change. In May of 2001, Secretary
of State Colin Powell argued that Iraq was effectively “contained” by the existing
military cordon and sanctions regime.
5

Deep within the president’s foreign policy apparatus, arguments about Iraq
were sustained by neo-conservatives such as Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.
6
Thus, Iraq
returned to the top of the national security agenda well before the events of
September 11, 2001. A few short months after 9/11, the presentation of Iraq as an
imminent threat formed the core of the administration’s rhetoric of war. During this
period both the president and high-profile advisors appeared before the public on
numerous occasions to highlight the significance of the Iraqi threat as a looming
crisis. The changing context of the post-9/11 world and the quick success of military
action in Afghanistan had created a newly permissive environment to advocate
intervention in Iraq.
7

The “case” for an Iraq crisis offered by the administration between 2001 and
2003 constituted a sustained public campaign even as U.S. military resources were
steadily transferred to the Persian Gulf. Instead of a single defining speech by the
president, the administration’s Iraq intentions were expressed within the
contributions of multiple spokespersons. Presidential advisors worked to clarify, test,
3

and defend the presumptions behind the war policy to the national audience. Paul
Wolfowitz promoted the policy prescription that the U.S. could not afford to wait
until threats grew too imminent. This notion was later formalized in the National
Security Strategy of 2002. Vice President Cheney amplified the deleterious nature of
the Iraq regime; eventually resorting to fallacious threat inflation to solidify his
claims. Secretary of State Colin Powell established a skein of evidence to buttress
the U.S. characterization of Iraq for the international community. Through the
rhetoric of the president and key advisors, the administration produced what James
Klump called a “mosaic of facts;” an accumulation of circumstantial claims and
appeals to value-driven foreign policy tailored to obviate the need for an invasion.
8

The analysis in this dissertation explores how the administration’s effort to
promote an Iraq was constituted in a campaign mobilized by multiple spokespersons
who defined the Iraq situation as a crisis. The administration’s arguments for war
were not the sole domain of the President, but rather were a series of burdens shared
by presidential advisors who leveraged their relation to presidential authority and
exposure to media outlets. Kathleen Farrell and Marilyn Young claim that Bush’s
advisors “played a… significant part in constructing the ambiguous public
knowledge that would leave Americans ill-prepared to evaluate the administration’s
policy toward Iraq.”
9
The dissertation is a critical analysis of the rhetorical events,
speeches, interviews, and public discourse of three key agents in this rhetorical
campaign.
4

The importance of presidential advisors in steering the administration
internally towards war is well documented. James Mann’s history of the Bush
administration’s foreign policy team, The Rise of the Vulcans, concludes that Bush’s
foreign policy doctrine was as much a product of the Bush advisors’ previous
experiences in foreign policy as it was Bush’s leadership.
∗
Historical accounts of the
Iraq war by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, George Packer, and Bob Woodward all
highlight the intra-administration wrangling over the decision to go to war and its
eventual prosecution.
10
Their work imputes significant influence to Bush’s advisors
in conceiving the Iraq war. George Friedman’s and Ron Suskind’s respective
accounts of U.S. anti-terrorism strategy after 9/11 reveal a similar story of advisors
essential to implementing the “Bush doctrine” for security policy.
11

As James Mann declared: “The decision to invade Iraq had encapsulated
virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans’ view of the world. It reflected the
foreign policy ideas and themes that the Vulcans had gradually developed over the
previous three decades.”
12
These histories together construct a narrative of the Iraq
war comprised of many actors actively shaping the course of the war policy. This
dissertation expands this line of inquiry by analyzing the significance of the
advisors’ contribution to the rhetorical campaign behind the Iraq war.

∗
The term “Vulcan” used by James Mann refers to the self-styled name given to
President Bush’s foreign policy advisory team during the 2000 presidential election.
5

The study of presidential advisors’ public discourse opens a new avenue for
inquiry into the study of presidential crisis rhetoric. Previous scholarship places the
president as the sole exponent of foreign policy in times of crisis. The president,
acting as commander-in-chief, is featured as the principal actor within the hierarchy
of foreign policy-making.
13
In both foreign policy and presidential studies, it is the
president who makes decisions under various bureaucratic and contextual political
constraints.
14
This scholarship has previously explored organizational influence,
advice structures, individual characteristics, social forces, and cognitive strategies of
executive decision-making.
15
Studies of the role of advisors in foreign policy,
however, have not been extended considerations of how they play key roles in public
advocacy.
16

Some foreign policy analyses suggest a space for the role of influence and
persuasion in policy formation.
17
Much of this work, however, focuses on the media
more generally.
18
Other studies attempt to theorize the fundamental role of
“discourse” on policy.”
19
Rhetorical studies have likewise engaged the rhetorically
constructed nature of foreign policy through case studies of “presidential” crisis
rhetoric.
20
Crisis rhetoric is characterized as the most prominent rhetorical strategy
when presidents seek to legitimate and authorize military action. The president is
seen to possess the capacity to create a sense of crisis to justify action or, similarly,
to cultivate an environment within which a desired policy can be enacted.
21
Thus, the
president both manages and manufactures crisis. While critical situations may afford
6

the president agency to push an agenda due to extraordinary circumstances, the more
common observation is that crisis is itself a rhetorical construction, replete with
unique opportunities to promote a descriptive language and set of policy
definitions.
22

Crisis rhetoric, therefore, establishes points of stasis, or central topics in
public argumentation about a set of events or episodes. The ability of the president to
define crisis bestows to his opponents the burden of overcoming presumption.
23

Administrations thus exploit institutional authority to define the range of legitimate
debate. Crisis rhetoric does not compel the administration to define “complete
victory,” merely to offer arguments that deflect criticism until long-term consensus is
formulated. Crisis rhetoric need not detail a long-term policy, but rather a historical
period that may seem short term.
24
If a crisis is extended, advisors may enter into
public debate to put out new ideas, defend the president, and persuade the public.
A significant international crisis sustained over time, therefore, may involve
multiple participants in its rhetoric. While the president plays a significant role in
defining a policy situation and setting a national agenda,
25
presidents are also part of
a larger network of supportive or sympathetic public advocacy. The same should
hold true for crisis rhetoric. As Jim Kuypers observed, the notion of crisis rhetoric
itself has expanded to incorporate the essential place of media in sustaining crisis
arguments.
26
This suggests a more inclusive sphere of argument roles and
dependencies on national media sources. Young and Farrell argue as much in their
7

assessment of arguments leading up to the Iraq war. For them, studies of the Iraq war
rhetoric require that “all parties in the administration should be included… because
the ‘entire’ text often emerges over time, with segments assigned to various
functionaries.”
27
Following these concerns, this dissertation is a study of the pre-Iraq
war crisis rhetoric that investigates the contributions of presidential advisors to the
administration’s rhetorical “movement” to promote war with Iraq.
Procedure of study
The central contention of this dissertation is that crucial moments of
transformation in U.S. foreign policy are sustained through a mobilization of
arguments based in crisis, linked by ideational association and media complicity
between administration spokespersons and national media outlets. The 2003 U.S.-
lead war in Iraq is presented as a case to demonstrate how this dramatic policy was
justified and defended to the public through a sustained promotion of crisis. This
dissertation hypothesizes that to build and sustain a national consensus on the
necessity of war required a substantial campaign of administration argument –
flexible enough to respond to the shifting contingences of public opinion yet
totalizing in its capacity to answer critics of policy alternatives with a self-justifying
discourse. For the purpose of this study, the Bush administration’s campaign of crisis
rhetoric is analyzed as a rhetorical movement.
David Zarefsky elaborated the idea of rhetorical movements to illustrate how
political discourse is transformed by government leaders in much the same way
8

social movements seek to transform the status quo.
28
The rhetorical movement
concept orients analysis to show how multiple actors engage in public argument to
bring about a significant transformation in public opinion. Rhetorical movements
reveal how political agendas are amplified in concrete moments, often in reaction to
events as actors mobilize to promote and defend ideas. These movements are not
monolithic campaigns to propagate a message. Allied actors take up multiple
argument burdens that emerge at different stages in the span of the mobilization. The
rhetorical movement of the pre-war campaign is studied here to illuminate the
division of argument burdens necessary to sustain the movement. These include
promoting an alternative ideological framework for foreign policy arguments,
defending the President’s ability to characterize the war, and entrenching a logical
standard to evaluate the war that deflects criticism. These burdens are studied to
reveal the complexity of the crisis rhetoric genre and the dynamic uses of classical
argument styles to support it.
29

This study examines the rhetoric of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice
President Richard Cheney, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for
the period of June 2001 to March of 2003 as key contributors to the administration’s
rhetorical movement. Speeches and television appearances were selected for analysis
that fulfilled a “movement” burden: such as priming the imminence of the war policy
or responding to perceived criticism of the president’s increasingly inevitable Iraq
intervention. Not all of these advisors’ speeches and appearances are discussed.
9

Rather, representative texts are selected to illustrate argument moves necessary to
sustain, initiate, and expand the administration’s rhetorical movement.
This analysis of rhetorical movement focuses in particular on how crisis
rhetoric functioned as an underling rhetorical strategy for the administration’s war
arguments. Two aspects of the discourse in particular are illuminated: (1) how crisis
rhetoric unfolded across a series of contexts to fulfill argument roles necessary to
sustain the administration’s rhetorical movement over time; (2) how arguments were
made to deflect criticism and cultivate wide national consensus. The procedure for
inquiring into these dimensions of rhetorical movement arguments involve a close
textual analysis of representative speech made by each respective presidential
advisor and a review of the arguments made by these advisors in national media
appearances. In sum, the dissertation pieces together the course of argument strategy
endemic to crisis rhetoric that was constitutive of the administration’s rhetorical
movement.
30

The previously described influence of presidential advisors on decision-
making suggests influence on the process by which the war was promoted. By
employing the rhetorical movement as an analytical tool, the dissertation shows how
this group of rhetors promoted the administration’s discourse to transform public
understanding of a necessary national security policy. Such efforts are not without
precedence in public policy. Robert Asen examines the legacy of the rhetoric of
poverty during the 1990s congressional welfare reform debates and suggests that the
10

cumulative effect of such campaigns transformed the “social imagination” of
government’s obligations towards poverty
31
To create a national consensus that Iraq
represented an imminent crisis likely required a similar kind of change in foreign
policy “imagination.”
The Zarefsky “movement” model has four distinct advantages for analysis of
the pre-war foreign policy rhetoric. First, movements elaborate a discursive structure
– a rhetorical division of labor - to the promotion of crisis rhetoric that typifies
presidential foreign policy arguments. Second, rhetorical movements contain
arguments tailored to transform the accepted doxa of the status quo in government
policy. Third, the movement model identifies the necessity of multiple actors within
the “aggressor” faction seeking to disturb the presumptive policy wisdom of the
status quo. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the movement model offers a
diachronic perspective on the field of argument put forth by the movement.
Zarefsky’s analytical metaphor of “movement” maps observations of rhetorical
agents and message proliferation, providing the most appropriate tool for analyzing
the range of arguments fielded by Bush’s presidential advisors during the pre-war
rhetorical campaign.
Justification for the study
The Bush administration’s rhetorical construction of the Iraq crisis merits
serious consideration as a rhetorical movement for three significant reasons. First,
the study of the presidency as a change-agent in domestic policy deserves a
11

complimentary counterpart in foreign policy. The scenic backdrop of the “War on
Terror” allowed arguments for an Iraq war to symbolize a revolutionary policy
imagination. A potential Iraq war created an opportunity to impose a distinctly neo-
conservative narrative onto U.S. foreign policy. This dissertation works to explain
how the commander-in-chief mobilized the rhetorical resources of the executive
branch to effect radical change.
Second, the social movement model examines the interlocking discourse of
multiple actors. Prior to the invasion in March of 2003, administration rhetors served
as more than just extensions of the presidential voice. Many leveraged complicit
media outlets to promote the administration’s definition of the Iraqi crisis during the
timeframe necessary to prepare for war. The campaign of advisor rhetoric was timed
to maximize national exposure for crisis promotion at key moments when the policy
for war required elaboration or defense. Presidential advisors are argued to have
shared the burdens of argument to push the objectives of the movement from relative
obscurity to agreed-upon common sense for U.S. strategic policy. The timing of
administration’s pre-war campaign and the media-intensive manner in which it
engaged the public audience point to a rhetorical movement as the most appropriate
conceptual framework for analysis.
Third, analysis of the Bush administration’s rhetoric for war as a
“movement” as opposed to a “campaign” captures how the administration used the
events of 9/11 to align public understanding of Iraq to the broader “terror” war and to
12

cultivate support for the broad mandate of the National Strategic Doctrine of 2002.
The administration’s rhetoric was more than a persuasive campaign – it seized upon
the national anxiety, fear, and guilt in the wake of 9/11 to frame a new strategic
discourse. This dissertation argues that the war against Iraq required public assent on
a sweep of ideological presumptions to overturn a legacy of Cold War consensus on
foreign policy. This required nothing short of a rhetorical movement.
The gravity of the administration’s strategic arguments for war illustrates
how movement rhetoric can leverage the emotions of the public around a pivotal
event. Thomas Kemper argues that social movements are sustained by appeals to
emotion. For Kemper, “[s]ocial movements are awash in emotions. Anger, fear,
envy, guilt, pity, shame, awe, passion…”
32
He argues that without emotion it
would be difficult to account for how a movement achieves “critical levels of
support, [and] maintain such support in long-enduring campaigns in the face
of intense opposition, and provide means for recruiting and sustaining
supporters.”
33
Thus, 9/11 proved a compelling (and convenient) event around
which the administrations could instill public identification with its vision.
The arguments for war in Iraq reflect a campaign to inculcate a new policy
imagination grounded in emotional appeals that builds upon the aftermath of
9/11 to forward a new security agenda.
13

Movement rhetoric invites the audience to share in the administration’s
foreign policy imagination. It highlights the strategy of promoting threat imminence
to make a proposed military intervention more salient and real.
34
At the same time,
such rhetoric hails the national audience not as deliberators, but as patriotic witnesses
to the government’s radical actions in the name of national security. It is a rhetorical
exercise in both self and world description. As Kevin de Luca explains, the rhetoric
of movements “thematize personal and collective identity, contest social norms,
challenge the logic governing the system, and in sum, deconstruct the established
naming of the world.”
35
This description follows Michael Calvin McGee’s assertion
that a movement can be read critically for its capacity to broadly challenge collective
meaning. For McGee, a movement can "move” prevailing social norms and key
terms of public discourse through time.
36

As social movement scholars David Snow and Pamela Oliver argue,
movements aim to shape the “politics of signification” through symbolic action,
public speeches and media content, in order to advance “certain meanings and
understandings… gain ascendance over others, or at least move up some existing
hierarchy of credibility.”
37
For the Bush administration, the events of 9/11 provided
an opportunity to forward the change presumptions of its new policy doctrine
through a movement strategy. Its rhetoric represents what Verta Taylor and Nella
Van Dyke call a “tactical repertoire” to frame a new policy doctrine.
38
Such politics
of signification are present throughout the administration’s war rhetoric. For
14

example, Paul Wolfowitz’s testimony to Congress during the October 2001
Quadrennial Defensive Review links the events of 9/11 to the necessity of a
fundamentally new strategic doctrine. The Deputy Secretary of Defense argues that
the United States “must recognize that these strikes were not just an act of war—
they were a window into our future. These attacks were an assault on our people and
our way of life; but they were also a wake-up call—one that we ignore at our peril.”
39

This dramatic characterization frames his proposed policy changes as a massive
realignment of the national security posture.
Wolfowitz draws attention to the previous security paradigm of the Cold
War as analogous to the conflict sparked by 9/11. The nascent “War on Terror” is
portrayed as the next challenge in ongoing narrative of American conflict with
tyranny: “the terrorist movements and totalitarian regimes of the world have a
variety of motives and goals. But the same thing unites our enemies today, as it did
in the past: a desire to see America driven into retreat and isolation.”
40
He does not
frame the new “war” as simply a policy change – but rather a confrontation that
transforms how the nation engages an undefined and amorphous existential threat.
“That is why our challenge today is greater than winning the war against terrorism.
Today’s terrorist threat is a precursor of even greater threats to come.”
41
Here the
Deputy Secretary builds upon the tragedy of 9/11 to present a new strategic calculus
with broad political support.
15

Wolfowitz’s comments underscore the link between the administration’s new
strategic doctrine and relevance of rhetorical exigence. As Colin Deuck argues, 9/11
was a pivotal event to exploit in the arguments for a new foreign policy paradigm:
The terrorist attacks simply opened up a window of opportunity for
advocates of alternative grand strategies to come forward and make
their case. What in fact occurred in 2001/02 was that key foreign
policy advocates – first within and beyond the Bush administration,
and then including the President himself – took advantage of this
window of opportunity to set the agenda, and to build support for a
new strategy of American primacy.
42

For Deuck, the 9/11 attacks catalyzed a convergence of public argument and policy
actors around a new strategic agenda. The ensuing vague yet sweeping ‘war on
terror” would “allow for the pursuit of a broad new national security agenda, even in
areas essentially unrelated to the initial terrorist attacks. The leading example of this
phenomenon was in Iraq.”
43
The administration’s arguments for Iraq thus tested the
transformative rhetoric of foreign policy change. It is important to note that
Wolfowitz’s strategic arguments did not change after 9/11. Further exploration of the
role of context and events in the rhetorical campaign is required to grasp the
significance of the argument strategies and their timing prior to the war in 2003.
The dissertation examines the link between foreign policy exigency and the
Bush rhetorical movement as an important reformulation of foreign policy discourse.
The context of the end of the Cold War offered an “opening” for a movement to
manifest in the Bush administration foreign policy arguments. The events of 9/11
punctuated an end to the ambivalence of post-cold war policy imagination, and an
16

opportunity for the Bush administration to promulgate a new set of ideologically-
infused policy prescriptions. Previous attempts to articulate a coherent foreign policy
during the Clinton administration resulted in a disjointed string of arguments,
unhinged from the “commanding ideas” that had defined Cold War rhetoric.
44
No
dominant trope or ideological foundation for foreign policy had captured the
“imagination” of post-Cold War foreign policy for very long, other than a vague
commitment to the promotion of market-based democracies.
45

Kathryn Olson’s study of President Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric revealed
that Clinton’s arguments for “democratic enlargement” comprised a “paradoxically
hyper-flexible frame that pitched ‘chaos’ as the main global enemy.”
46
Clinton’s
foreign policy rhetoric broadly interpreted international events as “disconnected”
rather than situated in a more tightly imagined foreign policy drama.
47
Crises such as
Haiti and Somalia were justified in a manner that left no lasting impression of a
value hierarchy or governing ethic. Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric offered the more
general goal of countering chaos with democracy. As Olson argued, this was a “case-
specific rhetoric that [was] disorderly, chaotic, messy, and undisciplined in form.”
48

Clinton’s rhetoric lacked what Mary Stuckey called an “orientational metaphor” to
define the strategic demands of the moment while reconciling these demands with a
conception of U.S. moral obligation in its foreign policy.
49

Stuckey argued that this fusion of definitional and value rhetoric would draw
upon the argument strategies of the Cold War in “rhetorical hybrids” necessary to
17

argue for a new foreign policy vision. A governing narrative for foreign policy
would demand more than a patching together of argument claims, but rhetoric that
detailed a complete logic of the international scene. The lesson drawn from both
Stuckey and Olson is similar – administration foreign policy rhetoric requires
arguments that cohere around policy logics that are systematic and can be articulated
across contexts. Administration foreign policy rhetoric is essentially a discursive,
political project, rather than ad hoc reactions to incidents or cases. Administrations
are not just providing justifications for foreign policy, but coaching an imagination
about international relations.
Both Stuckey and Olson’s conclusions about foreign policy rhetoric represent
something of a challenge to previous conceptions of crisis rhetoric in U.S. foreign
policy. Crisis rhetoric is theorized to allow the president the ability to define an
appropriate foreign policy in response to an event.
50
But what if no compelling frame
is available to an administration? Jim Kuypers observed that even isolated
international events require the use of a dominant “frame” to contextualize the
policy.
51
It would appear that both “orientational metaphors” and “frames” reveal a
crucial dimension to crisis rhetoric, because they provide the governing narrative or
ideological framework to justify a response to crisis. Yet as both Philip Wander and
Thomas Kane observed, the “commanding ideas” that support foreign policy are
communicated from multiple vectors –from a range of policy elites and media
18

outlets.
52
Hence, international crisis rhetoric is likely a generative, complex,
expanded moment of a larger rhetorical movement.
This dissertation explores this claim by (1) asking what arguments were made
publicly by key advisors and (2) how were these deployed by media to echo the
claims of the administration in the public sphere? Two aspects of contemporary U.S.
politics and media underscore this inquiry. First, the transparency enabled by mass
communications makes political decision-making more subject to public scrutiny.
53

Current debates over the impact of media on foreign policy suggest that media play a
significant role in the process of foreign policy-making, and concurrently in the
development of political pressures.
54
In essence, news media can be instrumental in
creating a public appetite for a particular foreign policy. Administrations are thus
obligated to seek multiple outlets to argue and defend their policy. Second, the
audience for presidential speeches is shrinking apace with the fragmentation of
media outlets.
55
Denise Bostdorff suggests this complicated media environment
means that “media management techniques are increasingly important” to
administrations.
56
Thus, for presidential crisis rhetoric to “work” it requires a more
involved, substantial effort to cultivate the desired climate of opinion towards a
policy. Administration’s need to engage publics across multiple outlets and leverage
the capacity of media to communicate the policy “imagination” implicit in its crisis
rhetoric. The most readily available construct available to describe this activity
within rhetorical studies is the notion of the rhetorical movement. The following
19

section elaborates how movements are understood in this dissertation as a division of
argument roles that sustain a rhetoric of international crisis.
Crisis rhetoric within rhetorical movements
Movement studies allow the critic to distinguish the steps through which
crisis rhetoric “constructs” an international crisis over time, by highlighting what
kinds of arguments were made at particular moments and what purpose these
arguments served. The structure and stages of a movement correspond to potentially
distinct argument objectives, timing, and forms of reasoning. Yet how does crisis
rhetoric operate within a rhetorical movement? The “tasks” of crisis rhetoric need to
be developed to comprehend the argumentative burdens of the movement. The
means to describe crisis rhetoric’s function in a movement is presaged in previous
studies of crisis and war rhetoric that consider how administrations deploy the
classical genres of argument.
Theodore Windt’s initial explication of crisis rhetoric narrowly defines it as a
process by which the president rhetorically constructs a crisis through definition of
the situation, often through crafting a melodrama of good versus evil, then using this
narrative to accrue the authority necessary to enact a desired policy response.
57
Crisis
rhetoric has often structured the organizing tropes behind these definitional strategies
of public argument. The distinction offered here is that crisis provides a systemic
policy discourse, requiring considerable rhetorical agency to cultivate. Previous
rhetorical scholarship on foreign policy and crisis settles on a definition of crisis that
20

is immediate, transitional and momentary.
58
While conventional definitions of crisis
in rhetorical studies and in foreign policy decision-making analysis denote a period
of “critical decision in the life of an issue” or similarly “a critical point,”
59
this study
builds upon previous studies that examine the discursive characteristics of crisis as a
kind of policy rhetoric, such as Bonnie Dow’s exploration of epideictic arguments
within crisis rhetoric and Richard Cherwitz and Kenneth Zagacki’s parsing of
justificatory and consummatory crisis rhetoric.
60
Their studies suggest a kind of
discursive world-building, augmented by an epistemic capacity in crisis rhetoric.
The form of crisis studied in this dissertation includes the tropes of
impending war, threats to civilization, and patriotic responsibility. These elements of
foreign policy crisis are shown to bequeath urgency and salience to foreign policy
advocacy, for they cultivate a kind of rhetorical culture that does not readily engage
in open critical reflection over policy declarations.
61
This study does not engage
directly the epistemological questions that arise around debates over whether
international crisis are “actual” or “constructed.” Rather, it presumes that “crisis” is a
useful trope used by foreign policy actors to construct a specific, persuasive body of
public argumentation for a foreign policy vision that allows for actors outside the
authority of the president to participate in the promotion of a foreign policy
discourse.
This assumption does not contradict previous assertions about the nature of
presidential crisis rhetoric. Amos Kiewe observed that “presidential crisis rhetoric…
21

consists of the discursive products created and transacted through an interaction
between the president, the press, and the public, and serves to legitimize (or to
delegitimize) the definition of a given situation as critical.”
62
Under this definition,
crisis rhetoric becomes indispensable to the government’s foreign policy advocacy,
as Cherwitz and Zagacki argue in their treatment of international crisis rhetoric.
63

Bonnie Dow’s assessment of the genre explores the uses of argument styles
within its methods and applications. For Dow, crisis rhetoric represents a rich field of
argument tactics deployed to capitalize on a situation. Dow observes that the crisis
rhetoric “genre” often represents a dynamic mixture of classical argument styles that
avoided simple classification.
64
Presidents often engaged in arguments that appear to
match the standards of both the deliberative and epideictic genre.
For example, Dow’s analysis of Reagan’s speeches on the invasion of
Grenada in October of 1983 and the airstrikes against Libya in April of 1986 notes
that what ought to have been a deliberative speeches exhibited largely epideictic
qualities. Aristotle’s notion of the deliberative is pertinent to scenarios where the
rhetor is “establishing the expediency or harmfulness of a proposed course of
action.”
65
Yet Dow notes that crisis rhetoric often focuses on arguing the “most
expedient to have taken.” In other words, deliberative arguments often slip into the
epideictic to serve what Celeste Condit has called a “definition/understanding”
role.
66
Crisis rhetoric imposes the perception of imminence and transition that
22

heighten the urgency of the situation, thus heightening deference to the
administration.
For Dow, crisis rhetoric blurs the line between explanation and advocacy.
She suggests that the burdens of crisis rhetoric shift in accordance with the exigency
of the situation, and that even when deliberative arguments are called for, epideictic
strategies are often deployed. This is especially true when concerned with the
possibility of a future war. Yet Dow’s analysis implicitly suggests a staged process
of argument – where crisis rhetoric both defines the scene, and then shifts to defend
the president’s authority to react to the scene. Thus, a “movement” based in crisis
rhetoric would also exhibit a dynamic ratio of deliberative to epideictic arguments,
deployed to maximize the power to define the policy scene while minimizing dissent
or ambiguity related to the proposed policy. Movements manage public discourse
over time by setting the terms of policy debate and subsequently shunting aside
avenues for criticism.
Crisis rhetoric’s generic cousin, presidential war rhetoric, corroborates
Dow’s observations about its characteristic arguments and shows how burdens of
argument are divvied up in a rhetorical movement. According to Karolyn Kohrs
Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, presidential war rhetoric evolved from
deliberative arguments to arguments that justify events already in progress.
67

Administrations expend less rhetorical effort in arguing that a war is necessary, and
more to characterize a war in a manner that assumes its inevitability. Campbell and
23

Jamieson note that the history of presidential war rhetoric reveals five “pivotal
characteristics:”
(1) every element in it proclaims momentous decision to resort
to force is deliberate, the product of thoughtful consideration; (2)
forceful intervention is justified through a chronicle or narrative form
from which argumentative claims are drawn; (3) the audience is
exhorted to unanimity of purpose and total commitment; (4) the
rhetoric not only justifies the use of force but also seeks to legitimate
presidential assumption of extraordinary powers of the commander in
chief; and, as a function of these other characteristics, (5) strategic
misrepresentations play an unusually significant role in its appeals.
68

These generic qualities map conveniently onto the domain of crisis rhetoric and are
readily evident in the arguments for war in Iraq. They also cue the critic of
administration discourse to the argument roles present in crisis discourse, and signal
what kinds of argument styles might be prevalent – especially in the ratio of
epideictic over deliberative forms to be found in the Bush administration’s rhetorical
movement.
Kathryn Olson’s analysis of the Bush administration’s Iraq war arguments
echoes Dow’s earlier study by stating that it relied on variations of epideictic
argument to present its case.
69
She suggests that argument scholars should not
mistakenly apply the standards of deliberative argument genre to their criticism of
pre-war arguments. To do so ignores a key aspect of the deliberative form largely
missing from the administration’s rhetorical campaign. Aristotle stated that
deliberative arguments about the future implied that the audiences were “judges who
are capable of influencing which policy course of action to follow.”
70
Olson notes
24

that Bush’s arguments did not interpellate the national audience as “judges.” Instead,
“the nature, evidence, expectations of the audience, and effective refutation”
suggested that an epideictic strategy masked a performance of deliberation in Bush’s
campaign of arguments for war.
71

Olson’s observations parallel the generic elements of war rhetoric described
by Campbell and Jamieson, and suggest something more fundamental about how
arguments for war are made by administrations. Epideictic arguments dispense with
the standards of “expedience” and the “practical” when the audience is not called
upon to judge a policy justification. Administrations reap considerable powers to
prosecute wars in the process.
When epideictic arguments are used to control the debate over the war, the very
standards of the argument genre preclude serious critical rejoinder because there is
little evidence to deliberate. The Bush administration’s rhetorical tactic of epideictic
argument reduced the need to supply substantial evidence, “[b]ecause an epideictic
arguer treats the actions under discussion as themselves not in dispute, adequate
evidence is more speculative and comparative than the minimum required for a
forensic or deliberative case.”
72
Criticism of the Bush administration did not emerge
because the argument strategy did not invite participation in the debate. She suggests
this was largely accomplished by resorting to an epideictic argument strategy of
amplification.
25

Aristotle described amplification as required when “all that remains to be
done is to attribute beauty and importance.”
73
In epideictic kinds of speeches,
“amplification is employed, as a rule, to prove that things are honorable or useful; for
the facts must be taken on trust, since proofs of these are rarely given, and only if
they are incredible or the responsibility is attributed to another.”
74
Amplification
amounts to a strategy of accumulation – corresponding to what Klump described as
the Bush administration’s “mosaic of facts” - as a way to characterize the purpose
of the war and not to justify it.
Despite the use of epideictic speech, the war was not a fait accompli for the
Bush administration. Olson suggests that the administration relied heavily on
epideictic speeches presented in deliberative fora. This hybridized form of epideictic
shielded the administration from significant critique be establishing a lower standard
for “proof” while it “tranquilized” audience action.
75
The considerable benefits of
epideictic arguments for crisis rhetoric, however, were not immediately accrued by
the administration when it began to float the idea of war against Iraq. As stated
earlier, a new invasion of Iraq was not a popular idea at the start of the
administration’s rhetorical campaign in early 2001. The viability of epideictic
argument likely grew over time as the movement unveiled a logic of war that seized
upon the events of 9/11.
This observation leads to the following hypothesis: hybrid forms of epideictic
arguments are endemic in presidential crisis rhetoric. Rhetorical movements based
26

in crisis rhetoric feature argument roles reflective of these hybrids that support the
movement at crucial moments. The following paragraphs describe how these roles
are conceptualized in this dissertation as inter-dependent argument burdens. These
burdens of public argument correspond to the phases of a rhetorical movement as
described by David Zarefsky. These include: Ideology, Piety, and Event
Response/Defense.
The foundation of a movement is its ideological project – the ideas promoted
by the movements discourse to supplant the doxa of the status quo. The ideological
argument burden is also essential for successive stages of movement argument;
movements need a set of grounds on which to base their claims. The beginning of a
rhetorical movement, or the inception phase, features the propagation of arguments
crafted to negate the existing “order.”
76
During this stage, arguments provide framing
strategies that spin out a conceptual vocabulary for the rhetorical movement. For
movements organized around foreign policy, these arguments constitute what
Kenneth Burke called “terministic screens,” through which administration rhetors
can define the scenic calculus of national security. As Burke notes, “any given
terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a
selection of reality; and this extent it must also function as a deflection of reality.”
77

This amounts to a definitional power in public argument that is intrinsic to the crisis
and war rhetoric genre.
27

At the core of a foreign policy movement are the definitions that elevate a
desired policy paradigm, while diminishing public perception of alternatives. These
terms are the building blocks of arguments that influence the “social imagination.”
The arguments of Paul Wolfowitz are presented to demonstrate how such terministic
strategies work to sustain Bush’s movement. Wolfowitz’s role as intellectual
architect is revealed through arguments that elaborate his ideal U.S. foreign policy,
and how such logic made a war with Iraq a viable policy alternative. As Burke
observes, “there is kind of a terministic compulsion to carry out the implications of
one’s terminology.”
78
The ideological grounds of movement rhetoric, therefore, will
likely comprise arguments that sustain the logic of later claims made to advance or
defend the movement.
A discursive framework for foreign policy does not sustain itself on the basis
of its internal assumptions. The discourse of a rhetorical movement is also sustained
by arguments that encourage consensus and discourage criticism. This burden is
described as piety. Previous policy “movements,” such as the rhetorical effort to
define the early days of the Cold War, relied on tactics that diminished consideration
of alternative strategies and solidified national consensus. For Burke, this is a
strategy of “piety;” which is a rhetorical “schema of orientation” that puts together
experiences in order to minimize debate.
79
Piety is embodied in the epideictic
argument tactics of crisis rhetoric. In this rhetoric, audiences are not addressed as
judges of a policy. Rather, coaching an attitude of piety is the responsibility of
28

“social priests” to cultivate consensus.
80
Piety defends a movement as it passes
through its “crisis phase,” when its terms and claims are most susceptible to
critique.
81

In the Bush administration’s rhetorical movement it will be shown that piety
manifests in its amplification arguments – the repeated invocations of Iraqi threat
and attacks on Saddam Hussein’s character. In this dissertation, these arguments are
studied for their capacity to demonstrate the power of epideictic argument to
cultivate “understanding” that diminishes ambiguity or uncertainty.
82
This kind of
argument recasts debate about a potential Iraq war into characterization of a conflict
already in progress. Richard Cheney’s speeches and television appearance provide
the most obvious examples of this strategy. Colin Powell’s rhetoric also contributes
to the accumulation tactics of amplification. Together, these advisors are investigated
as exemplars of piety rhetoric that was crucial to sustaining the momentum of the
Iraq agenda.
The final burden described here is the responsibility of movement rhetors to
defend the actors and claims associated with the movement. Situations arise within
the span of a movement that require the intervention of rhetors to react defensively
with arguments that stave off challenges to the movement’s claims. Arguments are
fielded to deflect criticism, shore up central assumptions, and defend the legitimacy
of the movement’s leadership.
29

For this study, the burden is revealed in how presidential advisors reacted to
events in order to preserve the objective of a national consensus that would sanction
war in Iraq. Advisors intervene when the authority of the president is questioned,
which would potentially undermine the ability to the president to define an Iraq
crisis. Arguments are also fielded to draw away criticism, in order to set up a false
drama that bolsters the president’s capacity to represent a “reasonable” course of
action in response to the crisis. These reactive argument tactics of movement rhetoric
are designed to ensure an unproblematic “consummation” stage of a rhetorical
movement, when the precepts of a movement become widely accepted in the public
sphere.
83
In total, these aspects of movement rhetoric highlight the complicated
process by which an orbit of advisors carried the rhetorical weight of the Iraq
campaign.
Organization

This dissertation contains four substantive chapters that illustrate detailed
examples of the argument roles played by presidential advisors and their contribution
to the rhetorical campaign. Chapter Two provides a historical review of select crisis
rhetoric from the Cold War and introduces the relevance of media to foreign policy
advocacy. This historical review serves two purposes. First, the presented episodes
of Cold War arguments illustrate how this previous period of crisis rhetoric
constituted a rhetorical movement to transform foreign policy. Specifically, the early
Cold War featured the contributions of multiple actors who worked to establish the
30

Cold War discourse formation. Second, the arguments presented during this period
provide the discursive context for the Bush administration’s own rhetorical
movement. The Cold War strategic frames of deterrence and containment represent
concepts rejected in arguments for Bush’s new strategic doctrine and the war in Iraq.
The chapter also reviews research on media and foreign policy to elaborate how
foreign policy advocacy is dependent on media outlets to frame public understanding
of policies and their context. This chapter establishes how paradigmatic changes in
foreign policy necessitate movements of crisis rhetoric. This claim is then developed
in the subsequent chapters, which examine the arguments of a specific presidential
advisor during historical episodes leading up to the Iraq war in 2003.
Chapter Three focuses on the arguments of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, between the period between June 1, 2001 to the aftermath of the
presidential State of the Union Speech in 2002. Paul Wolfowitz was an intellectual
architect of neo-conservative policy. In order to establish the formative context of his
views, the chapter opens with tracing the development of his foreign policy
experience. This is followed with analysis of two samples of his public argument on
foreign policy: the “Commencement Address to the United States Military Academy
in June of 2001” and his congressional testimony on the “Quadrennial Defense
Review in October of 2001.” These speeches were selected to illustrate the scope of
arguments that provided the grounds from which future arguments for war against
Iraq would be made. The Commencement Address is what James Mann calls a
31

“remarkable” speech,
84
with an eerily prescient view of the strategic context that
would unfold after the events of 9/11. This speech introduces the notion of “surprise”
as a fundamental to the policy posture that the United States must take. Both the
notion of surprise and the moral obligations of the United States are weaved together
in the Quadrennial Defense Review testimony, which asserts a strategic vision for
the United States in light of the developing War on Terror and the looming war in
Iraq.

The analysis of these speeches is framed by selections of Wolfowitz’s television
interviews and coverage within national press. These are presented as evidence of
Wolfowitz’s role in propagating the ideological grounds and terministic strategies of
the rhetorical campaign.
Chapter Four deals with how the principles established by Wolfowitz were
elaborated by the crisis-promotion of Vice President Richard Cheney. The chapter
charts how the Vice President steadily ramped up the Iraq crisis, while shielding the
president from having to commit to a pre-ordained policy of war. Rhetoric between
February of 2002 and Cheney’s speech to the 52
nd
Annual Veteran of Foreign Wars
Convention in August 2002 is covered. The last Cheney speech is identified as a
significant turning point in the administration’s rhetorical campaign, and an unusual
effort at public advocacy for the Vice-President.
85
Cheney’s appearances on
nationally televised talk-show interviews are also presented to demonstrate how he
intervened to sustain the Bush administration’s rhetorical movement. These
appearances are analyzed as a means by which the Vice President amplified the Iraqi
32

threat, while using the television interview venue to discourage criticism of the
proposed Iraq policy.
Chapter Five examines the role of Secretary of State Colin Powell in his
move from relative outsider status within the administration to a key public figure in
its public arguments for war at the close of 2002. The chapter examines how Powell
took up the burdens of argument for the administration after the fallout of Cheney’s
provocative stand on the Iraqi threat in August of 2002, then considers his arguments
surrounding the passage of U.N. Security Council resolution 1441, and finally the
fall to war in the winter of 2003. The chapter focuses in particular on Secretary
Powell’s elaborate speech to the U.N. Security Council, which laid bare the
administration’s arguments on Iraq to the world while consolidating a considerable
level of support for the impending war in the United States. Analysis of Powell’s
national media presence is also provided, and includes examination of newspaper
commentary about Powell at various stages of his role in the Iraqi crisis and select
appearances by the Secretary on televised interviews. Powell’s media representation
illustrates how he successfully defended the movement’s rhetorical objectives in the
public sphere and guided the administration through a crisis of legitimacy with the
United Nations.
Finally, the concluding chapter of this dissertation provides a recapitulation
of the analysis and observations present in the study. The chapter also points out
limitations and modifications to the arguments proposed. The dissertation concludes
33

with a summary of the major arguments of the dissertation and offer suggestions for
future avenues of inquiry and scholarship.
Limitations and scope
The propositions made in this dissertation address broad implications for
foreign policy discourse in the United States, yet the study itself is limited in
multiple dimensions. First, the chapters focusing on examples of public address deal
almost exclusively with the rhetorical acts framed in the context of secondary
journalistic coverage of the historic periods. This study is not intended to be a history
per se, but a historical tracing of an argumentative discourse on foreign policy.
Second, as this study focuses on rhetorical texts, it does not address or
speculate on the potential interior motivations of foreign policy actors or align with
rationalist accounts of foreign policy decision-making studies.
86
While this study
acknowledges the advancements in such scholarly work, it remains situated within a
communication-centric perspective. This study is also still largely contemporary. It
does not offer the hindsight afforded by an accumulation of historical detail that
future projects will undoubtedly provide. There is little historical distance from the
subject matter at the time of this writing; the full stories of the advisors examined in
this study have yet to be revealed. It also important to note that the principal foreign
policy action occurring during the historical period discussed in this dissertation -
major military operations in Iraq - is still in progress.
34

Third, this study admittedly leaves out other presidential advisors who played
public roles in the administration’s campaign for war. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice are the most obvious
omissions.
87
The rhetoric of Rumsfeld was not studied in this dissertation for two
reasons. First, Rumsfeld was not the discursive “architect” of the war; but became its
public face after he assumed the role of managing the war once it had begun.
88

Second, during the pre-war campaign, Rumsfeld was predominately occupied with
managing the war in Afghanistan and secretly coordinating the mobilization of
resources to Iraq.
89
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was not studied
because she was not as visible as other presidential advisors. While certainly a voice
for administration policy, Rice did little to contradict or distinguish her stance from
other advisor positions.
90
When Rice did make public statements they were often in
support of other advisors and echoed their talking points. Her arguments were neither
distinct nor numerous enough to merit a chapter devoted to her singular role in the
pre-war rhetorical movement. A more comprehensive analysis of the movement,
however, would certainly include both Rumsfeld and Rice’s rhetoric as important
complimentary efforts to sustain the public campaign.
Finally, this study is predominately focused on domestic actors in foreign
policy, and is but one effort in the larger project of considering the public discourse
of foreign policy that flow across national boundaries. It does not explore in great
detail the reactions to the rhetoric of crisis by international audiences. Texts
35

important to the study of communication and foreign policy that are outside of
official discourse are not studied. As such, this study does not address the potentially
numerous sites of text outside of mainstream U.S. news that also articulate the
rhetorical conduits between foreign policy elites and the public (such as instances of
popular culture, public expression in weblogs, art, etc.).
91
Scholars who do such
work argue that foreign policy cannot be distilled to the intentions of elite or
institutional thinking reflected in this study. Rather, this study should stand alongside
future studies that investigate how the public sphere functions as the generative
space where foreign policy discourse is contested – both internationally and abroad.
Argument and rhetorical studies informed by these works may yield further insights
into the application of argument genres across national boundaries and to the
consideration of other potential sources of text that augment the address of official
government discourse.
Conclusion
The controversial war waged against Iraq coincided with the ascendance of a
cadre of policy advisors – the Vulcans – who advocated a dramatic transformation in
U.S. foreign policy. This dissertation details how a rhetoric of U.S. foreign policy
was unveiled as a rhetorical movement carried out by these presidential advisors to
bring the nation to war. The movement is argued to have constructed an Iraq crisis
through argument tactics that both deflected criticism and removed the need for
substantive justification.
36

This unfolding rhetoric of crisis is investigated through analysis of public
arguments made by these advisors and the development of their “talking points” in
news media representation. The dissertation provides an argument-centric conception
of foreign policy advocacy that departs from a president-centric model of foreign
policy analysis. Foreign policy is reconceived here as a broader project of discourse
promotion and manipulation - through a study of how these actors engaged the
enormous task of gaining considerable national support for a preventive war. This
study argues that presidential advisors accomplished this task by maintaining a
liminal crisis rhetoric in ways that extended, defended, and amplified the capacity of
presidential power to wage war.
37

Chapter 1 Endnotes

1
Central Intelligence Agency, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the
DCI on Iraq’s WMD, (Washington, DC, September 30, 2004),
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/.

2
George Tenet quoted in “CIA Chief, No ‘Imminent Threat,’” CBS Evening News,
February 5, 2004,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/24/iraq/main601876.shtml; Dan Eggen,
“No Evidence Connecting Iraq to Al-Qaeda, 9/11 Panel Says,” Washington Post,
June 16, 2004, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

3
Robin Brown, “Getting to War: Communications and Mobilization in the 2002-03
Iraq Crisis,” in Media and Conflict in the Twenty First Century, ed. Phillip Seib
(New York: Palgrave, 2005), 66.

4
George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss,
and Giraux, 2005), 39.

5
Colin Powell, Foreign Operations, Senate Appropriations Committee, Foreign
Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations for FY2002,
107
th
Cong., 1
st
sess., May 15, 2001.

6
Packer, The Assassin’s Gate, 52-56.

7
Brown, “Getting to War,” 66.

8
James Klumpp, “Facts, Truth, and Iraq: A Call to Stewardship of Democratic
Argument,” in Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 14
th
Biennial
NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley (Washington, DC:
National Communication Association, 2005), 4.

9
Kathleen Farrell and Marilyn Young, “Not in Our Names: The Administration's
Private Construction of the War in Iraq," in Critical Problems in Argumentation:
Selected Papers from the 13th Biennial NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed.
Charles Arthur Willard (Washington, DC: National Communication Association,
2003), 720.

38

10
Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and
the Selling of the Iraq War, (New York: Crown, 2006); George Packer, The
Assassin’s Gate; Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War Part III (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 2006).

11
George Friedman, America’s Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle
Against America and Its Enemies, (New York: Doubleday, 2005); Ron Suskind, The
One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11,
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

12
James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New
York: Viking, 2004), 362.

13
Much of the work across disciplines studying presidential power reference
Neustadt’s argument that the primary capacity of the office of the president is to
persuade. Rhetorical theorist David Zarefsky resituates this power as principally one
of “definition” in public discourse. See Robert E. Jr. Denton, The Symbolic
Dimensions of the American Presidency (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press,
1980); Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New
York: Free Press, 1990); David Zarefsky, President Johnson's War on Poverty:
Rhetoric and History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986); David
Zarefsky, "Presidential Rhetoric and the Power of Definition," Presidential Studies
Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2004): 607-619.

14
Graham Allison and Philip Zelikew, Essence of Decision, 2nd ed. (New York:
Longman, 1999); Alexander George, Presidential Decision-Making in Foreign
Policy: The Effective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1980); James P. Pfiffner, The Modern Presidency (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1993); Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining,
Decision Making, and Systems Structure in International Crises (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1977).

39

15
Deborah Gerner, "The Evolution of the Study of Foreign Policy," in Foreign
Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation, ed. Laura Neack,
Jeanne A. K. Hey, and Patrick Haney (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995),
17-32; Patrick Haney, "Structure and Process in the Analysis of Foreign Policy
Crises," in Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second
Generation, ed. Laura Neack, Jeanne A. K. Hey, and Patrick Haney (1995); Valerie
Hudson, "Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations," Foreign
Policy Analysis 1, no. 1 (2005): 1-30.

16
David Mitchell, "Centralizing Advisory Systems: Presidential Influence and the
US Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process," Foreign Policy Analysis 1, no. 2
(2005): 181-206; James P. Pfiffner, "Presidential Decision Making: Rationality,
Advisory Systems, and Personality," Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2005):
217-228; Jean Garrison, Games Advisors Play: Foreign Policy in the Nixon and
Carter Administrations (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University, 1999);
George, Presidential Decision-Making in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of
Information and Advice; Paul Kenger, Wreath Layer or Policy Player? The Vice
President's Role in Foreign Policy (New York: Lexington Books, 2000); John
Orman, Presidential Secrecy and Deception: Beyond the Power to Persuade
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).

17
Joe D. Hagan, "Domestic Political Explanations in the Analysis of Foreign
Policy," in Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second
Generation, ed. Laura Neack, Jeanne A. K. Hey, and Patrick Haney (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995), 117-143; Barry B. Hughes, The Domestic Context of
American Foreign Policy (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1978);
Richard Melanson and KW Thompson, Foreign Policy and Domestic Policy
Consensus: The Credibility of Institutions, Policies and Leadership (Lanham:
University Press of America, 1985); Robert Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic
Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games," International Organization 42, no. 3
(1988): 427-60.

18
Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, "Defining the American Public
Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus," The International Studies Review 42, no. 1 (1998):
29-61; Brenda Seaver, "The Public Dimension of Foreign Policy," The Harvard
International Journal of Press/Politcs 3, no. 1 (1998): 65-91.

40

19
There is a broad spectrum of foreign policy analysis and international studies that
engages this role of ideas, concepts, and discourses in foreign policy from both
humanistic and social-cognitive traditions. See Edward H. Alden and Franz
Schurmann, Why We Need Ideologies in American Foreign Policy: Democratic
Politics and World Order (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990);
Yaacov Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing and
Perception in Foreign Policy Decision-Making (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1990); Albert S. Yee, "The Causal Effects of Ideas on Policies," International
Organization 50, no. 1 (1996): 69-108; Francois Debrix, "Language as Criticism:
Assessing the Merits of Speech Acts and Discursive Formations in International
Relations," New Political Science 24, no. 2 (2002), 201-19; Valerie Hudson,
"Cultural Expectations of One’s Own and Other Nations’ Foreign Policy Action
Templates," Political Psychology 20 (1999): 767-802; Michael Shapiro,
"Textualizing Global Politics," in International/Intertexual Relations: Postmodern
Readings of World Politics, ed. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (New York,
NY: Lexington Books, 1989), 11-22; Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests:
The US and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1999).

20
For the impact of rhetoric on foreign policy, see Francis Beer and Robert Hariman,
eds., Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations (East Lansing,
MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996); Ernest Bormann, John Cragan, and
Donald Shields, "An Expansion of the Rhetorical Vision Component of the Symbolic
Convergence Theory: The Cold War Paradigm Case," Communication Monographs,
no. 63 (1996): 1-28; Thomas Goodnight, "Public Argument and the Study of Foreign
Policy," American Diplomacy 3, no. 3 (1998),
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_8/goodnight.html; Thomas
Kane, "Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas," Argumentation and
Advocacy 28 (1991): 80-90; Martin J. Medhurst, "Rhetoric and Cold War: A Strategy
Approach," in Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology, ed. Martin J.
Medhurst, et al. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997), 19-28;
Kathryn M. Olson, "Democrat Enlargement's Value Hierarchy and Rhetorical Forms:
An Analysis of Clinton's Use of Post-War Symbolic Frame to Justify Military
Interventions," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2004), 307-40; Philip
Wander, "The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy," The Quarterly Journal of
Speech 70, no. 4 (1984): 339-61. For examples of presidential case study rhetoric,
both Denise Bostdorff and Jim Kuypers provide comprehensive literature reviews of
this tradition. See Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises,
Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric and the Press in the Post-Cold War World.

41

21
Theodore O. Windt, "The Presidency and Speeches on International Crises:
Repeating the Rhetorical Past," in Essays in Presidential Rhetoric, ed. Theodore O.
Windt and Beth Ingold (Kendall, IA: Hunt Publishing Company, 1987), 125-34.

22
Richard A Cherwitz, "Masking Inconsistency: The Tonkin Gulf Crisis,"
Communication Quarterly 28 (1980): 27-37; Richard Cherwitz and Kenneth
Zagacki, "Consummatory Versus Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric," Western Journal of
Speech Communication 50 (1986): 307-24; Bonnie J. Dow, "The Function of
Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in Presidential Crisis Rhetoric"; D. Ray
Heisey, "Reagan and Mitterrand Respond to International Crisis: Creating Versus
Transcending Appearances," Western Journal of Speech Communication 50 (1986):
325-35.

23
Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises, 5

24
Ibid.

25
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York:
Free Press, 1990); Jeffrey Tullis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987).

26
Jim A. Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric and the Press in the Post-Cold War
World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997).

27
Marilyn Young and Kathleen Farrell, “Not in Our Names”: 724. See also, Marilyn
Young and Michael K. Launer, Flights of Fancy: Flight of Doom: KAL 007 and
Soviet-American Rhetoric (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988).

28
David Zarefsky, "President Johnson's War on Poverty: The Rhetoric of Three
"Establishment" Movements," Communication Monographs 44 (1977): 353-73.

29
Bonnie J. Dow, "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in
Presidential Crisis Rhetoric," Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989):
301.

42

30
The rhetorical movement perspective divides the administration’s campaign into
distinct episodes of arguments linked to roles. It also suggests a more ecological
view of how argument is disseminated in the public sphere – where policy rhetors
engage the public sphere via media outlets to sustain the goals of the movement.
Zarefsky appropriated the idea of “movement” from Leland Griffin’s rhetorical study
of social movements in order to trace the development of public argument
surrounding the “War on Poverty” campaign waged by President Lyndon Johnson.
Zarefsky’s analysis depicted the Johnson campaign as a series of movement stages,
during which symbolic effort to reorient national political discourse followed a
course similar to the life-cycle of a social movement. The analytical framework is an
apt heuristic for the study of broad challenges to conventional “wisdom” in
government policy.

31
Robert Asen, Visions of Poverty: Welfare Policy and Political Imagination, (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002).

32
Thomas Kemper, “A Structural Approach to Social Movement Emotions,” in
Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, ed. Jeff Goodwin, James
Jasper, and Francesca Polletta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 58.

33
Ibid.

34
For more on the notion of imminence, see G. Thomas Goodnight, “Strategic
Doctrine, Public Debate, and the Terror War” in Hitting First: Preventive Force in
U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William Keller and Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg:
University of Pittsburg Press, 2006).

35
Kevin De Luca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism,
(New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 25.

36
Michael Calvin McGee, “'Social Movement': Phenomenon or Meaning?,” Central
States Speech Journal 31, (1980): 233-244.

37
David Snow and Pamela Oliver, “Social Movements and Collective Behavior:
Social Psychological Dimensions and Considerations,” Sociological Perspectives on
Social Psychology, ed. Karen S Cooke, Gary A Fine, and James House (Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 1995): 587.

43

38
Verta Taylor and Nella Van Dyke, “‘Get Up, Stand Up’: Tactical Repertoires of
Social Movements,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David
Snow, Sarah. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing,
2004), 262–93.

39
Paul Wolfowitz, Testimony Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the
Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review, Building a Military for the
21st Century, 107
th
Cong., 1
st
sess., October 4, 2001.

40
Ibid.

41
Ibid.

42
Colin Deuck, “Ideas and Alternatives in American Grand Strategy, 2000-2004,”
Review of International Studies 30, (2004): 528.

43
Ibid., 530.

44
Thomas Kane, "Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas,"
Argumentation and Advocacy 28 (1991): 80-90.

45
Ibid.

46
Kathryn Olson, "Democrat Enlargement's Value Hierarchy and Rhetorical Forms:
An Analysis of Clinton's Use of Post-War Symbolic Frame to Justify Military
Interventions," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2004): 309.

47
Thomas Hollihan, “The Public Controversy Over the Panama Canal Treaties: An
Analysis of American Foreign Policy Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Speech
Communication 50 (Fall): 368-87.

48
Olson, “Democrat Enlargement’s Value Hierarchy,” 323.

49
Mary Stuckey, “Competing Foreign Policy Visions: Rhetorical Hybrids After the
Cold War,” Western Journal of Communication 59, no. 3, (1995): 214-227.

50
Theodore O. Windt, "The Presidency and Speeches on International Crises.”

51
Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric, 44-45.

44

52
Wander, "The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy"; Kane, "Foreign Policy
Suppositions and Commanding Ideas."

53
Eytan Gilboa, "The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of
International Relations," Political Communication 22, no. 1 (2005): 27-44.

54
Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and
Intervention, (London: Routledge, 2002).

55
Martin Wattenberg, “The Changing Presidential Media Environment,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3, (2004): 557-572.

56
Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises, 207.

57
Windt, "The Presidency and Speeches on International Crises,” 126-127.

58
For a good survey of work that uses this conception of crisis, see Amos Kiewe,
ed., The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994).

59
Denise M. Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 5; Patrick Haney, Organizing
Foreign Policy: Presidents, Advisers, and the Management of Decision-Making
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 2; Patrick Haney, "Structure
and Process in the Analysis of Foreign Policy Crises," in Foreign Policy Analysis:
Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation, ed. Laura Neack, Jeanne A. K.
Hey, and Patrick Haney (1995), 64.

60
Bonnie J. Dow, "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in
Presidential Crisis Rhetoric”; Richard A. Cherwitz and Kenneth S. Zagacki,
"Consummatory Versus Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric."

61
Robert Ivie, "Declaring a National Emergency: Truman's Rhetorical Crisis and the
Great Debate of 1951," in The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, ed. Amos
Kiewe (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 3.

62
Kiewe, The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, xvii.

63
Cherwitz and Zagacki, "Consummatory Versus Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric," 318.

45

64
Dow, "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies,” 295-297.

65
Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.iii.

66
Celeste Condit, “The Functions of Epideictic: The Boston Massacre Orations as
Exemplar,” Communication Quarterly 33, (1985): 33.

67
Karolyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words:
Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance, (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990), 102-103.

68
Ibid.,105.

69
Kathryn Olson, "The Epideictic Lens: The Unrealized Potential of Existing
Argumentation Theory to Explain the Bush Administration's Presentation of War in
Iraq," in Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 14
th
Biennial NCA/AFA
Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley, (Washington, DC: National
Communication Association, 2005): 18-28.

70
Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.iii.

71
Olson, "The Epideictic Lens,” 20.

72
Ibid.

73
Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.ix.

74
Aristotle, Rhetoric, III.xvii.

75
Olson, "The Epideictic Lens,” 24.

76
Zarefsky, “Johnson’s War on Poverty,” 353.

77
Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 45.

78
As quoted in Dan C. Hahn, "Corrupt Rhetoric: President Ford and the Mayaguez
Affair," Communication Quarterly 28 (1980): 38-43.

46

79
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984), 76.

80
Burke, Permanence and Change, 276.

81
Zarefsky, “Johnson’s War on Poverty,” 353.

82
See Condit, “The Functions of Epideictic.”

83
Zarefsky, “Johnson’s War on Poverty,” 353.

84
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 291.

85
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 341.

86
For an excellent summary of these perspectives, see Valerie Hudson, "Actor-
Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations."

87
Other advisors such as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith,
Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs
William Luti, and the Defense Department’s Office of Special Plans Director Abram
Shulsky played important roles in the intra-administration campaign behind the Iraq
war, but were not visible figures in the public promotional campaign.

88
Most historical accounts (such as those provided by George Packer, James Mann,
and Richard Clarke) all position Paul Wolfowitz as the most visible source of
strategic arguments in favor of war in Iraq. Their accounts balance this claim by
describing Richard Cheney as the political force that made the war a reality.

89
See Packer, The Assassin’s Gate; Suskind, The One Percent Solution.

90
Both George Packer and Bob Woodward have noted that Rice’s neutral stance
extended to internal debates over the war as well. Packer’s account describes Rice as
managing the conflicting perspectives within the administration, while not
articulating a definitive position of her own. Woodward’s account portrays Rice as
sidelined by Rumsfeld’s political maneuvering.

47

91
So called “post-structuralist” and “discourse”-based research in international
studies have begun to explore this territory. See Roland Bleiker, "The Aesthetic Turn
in International Political Theory," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30,
no. 3 (2001): 509-33; Der Derian, "Decoding the National Security Strategy of the
United States of American," boundary 2 30, no. 3 (2003): 19-27; Shapiro,
"Textualizing Global Politics"; Jutta Weldes, "Globalization Is Science Fiction,"
Millenium 30, no. 3 (2001): 647-67.

48

Chapter 2

Cold War Crisis Rhetoric, Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy

In previous studies of crisis rhetoric, presidents are described as the principle
actors in United States foreign policy, charged with both the responsibility and
capacity to direct public opinion and provide leadership during periods of
international crisis.
1
Throughout the sustained crisis of the Cold War, however,
public argument about foreign policy was not the sole domain of the president.
Presidential advisors, private citizens, and media outlets also helped define a
consensual understanding of foreign affairs in the United States. In order to
understand the significance of the Bush administration’s rhetorical movement
between 2001-2003, this chapter examines select episodes of crisis rhetoric from the
Cold War that highlight the nexus of presidential advisors, media, and public
opinion.
The justification for this historical review is two-fold. First, the Cold War
featured crucial moments during which multiple actors deployed crisis rhetoric to
sustain the president’s authority to define U.S. foreign policy. In these moments,
advisors helped establish the ideological discourse necessary to justify the Cold
War’s unprecedented large-scale mobilization. During the Truman administration,
advisors elaborated the foundational strategic arguments behind the Cold War.
Ambassador George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and his anonymous Foreign Affairs
article of 1947, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” provided an early definitive

49

assessment of the Soviet Union and suggested a sweeping strategy of
“containment.” Paul Nitze, another Truman advisor, aggressively promoted the
document known as NSC-68 – a classified report that outlined the ideological
precepts of U.S. Cold War strategy after its release in 1950.
2
Nitze’s efforts heralded
the growing influence of advisors both within and outside of government who
advocated an unprecedented security posture against a Soviet adversary “animated
by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own."
3
Advisors were instrumental in
translating the tenets of NSC-68 into an enduring national consensus on the Cold
War.
The early Cold-War advisors, peripheral advocacy groups, and sympathetic
media programming crafted a policy imagination to define the Cold War as a
civilizational struggle between “the idea of freedom under a government of laws, and
the idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin.”
4
Because Truman was
notably devoid of foreign policy expertise, advisors and foundational documents
established a generative discourse that shaped subsequent policies until the end of
the Cold War. Many advisors would continue to play key roles in public foreign
policy arguments across presidential administrations. Figures like Paul Nitze
cultivated like-minded strategic thinkers through advocacy groups such as the
Committee on the Present Danger. The work of advisors to sustain their policy vision
can be traced from the impact of NSC-68 up through George W. Bush’s National
Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002.

50

The second justification for this historical review is that Cold War public
argument provides the discursive context for the Bush administration’s own
rhetorical movement. The Bush administration’s foreign policy rhetoric after 9/11
declared it had abandoned Cold War policies to forge a new foreign policy doctrine,
though it still relied on the Cold War to frame its proposed doctrine. Bush’s advisors
presented the early days of the Cold War as a pivotal analogy for the post-9/11
moment. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, speaking about the 2002
NSS, declared: [T]his, then, is a period akin to 1945 and 1947…”
5
In his analysis of
Bush’s presidential advisors, James Mann argued that the 2002 NSS signified of
moment of transformation, “just as the Truman administration had constructed a new
framework of ideas and institutions at the beginning of the Cold War.”
6
Episodes of
Cold War crisis rhetoric are presented here in this study to reveal the historical
antecedents of the Bush administration’s rhetorical movement – in both the
contributions of non-presidential spokespersons and the increasing importance of
media to a rhetorical campaign. These episodes presage how the Cold War strategic
presumptions were publicly renounced in the Bush administration’s attempt to
promote a new security doctrine. Nevertheless, the arguments used to define the
Cold War security doctrine, such as those in NSC-68, bear significant resemblance to
the Bush advisors’ movement to reject the Cold War paradigm after 9/11. The Bush
administration defined its proposed policy revolution against the Cold War’s
discursive legacy, meriting further explication of Cold War public argument.

51

Even a cursory review of the rhetorical scholarship on the Cold War
reveals that foreign policy discourse is found equally in the activities of policy
partisans, advisors, and vocal private citizens.
7
The chapter presents evidence that
the Cold War featured the significant rhetorical contributions of advocates beyond
the president – to include a web of advocacy comprised of officials, policy experts,
members of Congress, and the media.
8
The sheer immensity of resources necessary
to carry out a grand strategy like the Cold War necessitated a coordinated effort to
advance a rhetorical vision that legitimated such a transformation.
9
Previous
rhetorical studies note the Cold War was marked by argument strategies that distilled
policy complexity and coached attitudes of acceptance on a massive scale.
10
Policy
rhetoric provided dramatic summations of global politics that could be easily
disseminated through the public sphere and sustain a relatively stable yet flexible
public understanding of U.S foreign policy.
11
The chapter is organized around
specific episodes that illustrate such strategies of public argument.
The first section of this chapter covers the arguments surrounding NSC-68, to
demonstrate how the Truman administration established an organizing ideological
discourse to sustain the foreign policy program of the early Cold War. The second
section builds on the previous, and shows how the crisis rhetoric of NSC-68 was
amplified by the first Committee on the Present Danger and other agents leveraging
the national news media. The third section jumps forward to the “Team B” episode
in 1976 and the activities of the second Committee on the Present Danger. This

52

section reveals how advocates outside the presidency coordinated their own
campaign of crisis rhetoric to steer foreign policy discourse. The final section
surveys scholarship covering the relationship between foreign policy advocacy and
the national media, in order to build the case that presidential administration rhetoric
has become dependent on public relations strategies that incorporate media outlets to
frame proposed policies and their context.
The Truman administration: promoting the ideology of NSC-68
This study posits that presidential advisors, through connectivity to media
outlets and their ability to speak individually and on behalf of the president, are
crucial promoters of foreign policy transformation. The dissertation explores how in
both the Cold War and during the build up to the Iraq war in 2001-2003, advisors
helped construct a coherent narrative by exploiting the exigency of crisis. While
Cold War presidents played important roles, announcing “terministic screens” to
describe foreign policy and unite the nation, they were but part of the greater process
of justifying the Cold War to the public. The Truman administration offers an
instructive glimpse at this process of coordinating public argument across a range of
actors and organizations. In particular, this period shows how policy elites in
addition to the president were significant contributors to the Cold War policy
argument formation.
President Harry Truman is widely acknowledged as setting a precedent for
future presidents to draw upon in their public justifications for Cold War policy

53

actions. Truman’s personal rhetoric, as well as his public stance toward Joseph
Stalin and the Soviet Union provided a blue-print for future presidents to emulate.
12

Historical accounts have depicted Truman’s public address as providing a sense of
“international emergency.”
13
The prevailing perspective on Truman’s rhetorical
strategy is drawn from his administration’s own recollections, memoirs, and
statements. These reveal that his administration attempted to “scare the hell out of
America” with statements that provided an “ideological straightjacket” which would
essentially deceive the American public into accepting the transition to a Cold War
footing.
14

Credit for this “straightjacket,” however, should be attributed to the range of
policy advocacy that surrounded Truman as much to his own public arguments.
While historical accounts do not ignore the fact that deliberate attempts were made to
manipulate public opinion during this time period – these histories also show how
the administration was concerned with controlling the flow of information to avoid
“chaos” in the political psychology of the American public.
15
In addition, the
Republican Party increased partisan pressure on the administration from 1947 to
1950 to escalate tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union by arguing
for preemptive action against the Soviets.
16
In order to forestall advocates on the
political right, who had introduced a language of preventive war and raised questions
about Truman’s own leadership abilities, the administration engaged in a steady
escalation of its own war rhetoric. Its rhetorical strategy ultimately grew to include

54

surrogate advocacy groups to carry the burdens of argument that placated partisan
critics while defining a large foreign policy re-alignment.
From the “Truman Doctrine” speech on March 12, 1947 to the spread of NSC
68’s tenets through foreign policy language, the legacy of the Truman
administration’s foreign policy promotion has been described as a collection of
“dramatic, even exaggerated terms.”
17
A significant characteristic of Truman
administration’s policy campaign was its acknowledgement of multiple
constituencies within the American public, who in turn could sustain or spread the
ideas originating within Truman’s administration. The administration’s plan (though
far from being coherent or always intentional) was an “information campaign that
sought to ‘bludgeon’ the minds of both top officials and the mass public.’”
18

Truman’s nascent Cold War policy was a large transformation (NSC 68 alone called
for massive increases in military spending and military service), and therefore had to
address both the reasoning of the foreign policy elite and the general public.
19

Truman’s foreign policy was more than an expression of the president’s
personal ideas. Rather, his administration’s foreign policy rhetoric reflected a group
of advisors intent on managing a radical change in American foreign policy. In
essence, the Truman foreign policy was an exercise in controlled crisis: the
manufacture of urgency and imminence through which to advocate a desired policy
change. While Truman’s administration is not the first to represent the influence of
advisors in crafting a policy, it is certainly a well-documented case of multiple actors

55

forging a policy vision. The case of Truman’s administration features advisors as
both originators and advocates of policy.
Truman himself entered office famously unskilled in the practice and
knowledge of foreign policy. Instead, he brought to the presidency what Arnold
Offner called a “parochial nationalism” that “narrowed Americans’ perception of
their world political environment and the channels for policy choices.”
20
His own
rhetorical efforts, coupled with the influence of his advisors, “ultimately created a
rigid framework in which the United States waged a long-term, extremely costly
global cold war.”
21
Though Truman’s style of diplomatic engagement and suspicion
of the Soviet Union may have contributed to a broader discourse of Cold War crisis,
the progression towards Cold War can also be traced to the actions of advisors such
as Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and Dean Acheson in extending the president’s crisis
rhetoric.
22

The sense of perpetual vigilance exhorted by advocates of Cold War strategic
doctrine was more than a reflection of Truman’s rhetorical style. The managed crisis
of Cold War foreign policy was embedded in the “hyperbolic language” of its
foundational strategic document, NSC-68.
23
The discursive framework for the new
“war” was enshrined within the various drafts of NSC 68. This document reflected
insights provided by Kennan’s famous “long telegram” from Moscow detailing his
assessment of the Soviet threat, as well as the designs of Paul Nitze, who was the
Deputy Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in the years leading

56

up to the release of NSC 68 in 1950. NSC 68 was not a public document (it would
not be declassified until the 1970s), though its effects were felt throughout the U.S.
foreign policy establishment. The document envisioned a series of strategies for
countering the Soviets, grounded on the premise that the United States faced a
tangible threat to both its cultural values and its material power. According to Robert
Newman, NSC-68 portrayed a veritable global crisis.
24

It is important to note that NSC-68 created more than just a sense of crisis. It
laid out an enduring institutional framework toward security policy that envisioned a
crisis with no immediate end. NSC-68 expanded the realm of national security to
include public assent. It envisioned a mobilization of the entire nation, rather than
just the government. The document warned that “the whole success of the proposed
program hangs ultimately on recognition by this Government, the American people,
and all peoples, that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free
world is at stake.”
25

As Gordon Mitchell and Robert Newman argue, NSC-68 provided an
“epistemological framework,” above any singular presidential address, that would
alter subsequent presidential administration’s approaches to security.
26
For them,
NSC-68 would blur “important distinctions, distorts priorities, and complicates
threat perception.”
27
NSC-68 was not a detached observation of the strategic
environment, but a call to arms that included the most “dire claims” about the intent
of the Soviet Union; a warning intended to alert an unwary nation that its strengths

57

and moral superiority were not sufficient to counter the Soviet threat to
civilization.
28
Yet the stewardship of this campaign of policy promotion was not
Truman himself (at least in its formative stages), but rather his Deputy Secretary of
State Paul Nitze and his informal network of supporters.
Conventional historical accounts point to the ascendance of NSC 68 after the
Korean War as the realization of a new “strategic vision.”
29
The Korean War
effectively validated suspicions regarding the Soviets and the spread of Communism.
More recent historical analysis has since questioned the veracity of claims regarding
the singular importance of NSC 68 and its centrality to the policy-making process.
30

Rather, the various draft iterations of the NSC 68 document reflect an internal debate
between presidential advisors on how to react to the Soviet situation. This debate
amounted to a difference between a measured response to an “ideological” yet
cautious Soviet power (the view espoused by George Kennan) versus a call to arms
against a known threat to the national way of life (Paul Nitze’s vision). The release
of NSC-68, ultimately, reflected the dominant perspective that emerged in this
debate. Consider the following passage that emerged in the draft:
The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or
destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself. They are issues
that will not await our deliberations.”
31

Steven Casey’s study of the Truman presidency has since put the ambition of
Paul Nitze and his relationship to NSC 68 into new light, and reveals a new
perspective on the role of advisors in promoting Cold War foreign policy. Nitze’s

58

concern with promoting the strategic aims of the document reveal an advisor
playing a central role in the advancement of a broad strategic vision. While the 1947
“Truman Doctrine” speech introduced a terminological ground for public argument
against the Soviet Union,
32
members of the Truman administration did not perceive
the public nor the Congress were entirely in agreement with an aggressive stance
against the Soviets. Therefore, prior to the release of the NSC 68 draft in 1950, Paul
Nitze and the members of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department
strategized how to promote the vision behind NSC 68. Newman calls NSC-68 a form
of policy “theology,” citing that Nitze sought ways to evangelize the tenets of his
arguments.
33
Casey argues that Nitze’s advisory staff tasked with formulating NSC
68 concerned themselves with how its arguments and language could be promoted
given the perceived public mood and their understanding of how publics react to
information about foreign policy:
For those officials and outside experts who were drawn into these
consultations, three assumptions underpinned their calculations: the need to
begin an information campaign as soon as possible; the likelihood that this
campaign would have to be characterized by some form of overheated
rhetoric; and a growing anxiety that any such effort to accentuate the danger
could easily backfire, particularly by sparking domestic pressure for a
dangerous escalation of the Cold War.
34

In other words, NSC 68 had the potential to cause an unmanageable crisis. Advisors
like Nitze were concerned that the political climate of 1950, which was leaning
towards accepting agreements with the Soviet Union and inclined to deep budget
cuts, could swing wildly towards paranoia and preemptive action against the Soviets.

59

Nitze’s concern stemmed in part from the belief within academia at the
time that the public was ill-equipped to assess the strategic situation facing the
United States, and also sensitive to news of potential threat

.
35
The advisors involved
with NSC 68 hoped to persuade President Truman to make a public statement after
approving the document in 1950. However, Truman was hesitant to renege on his
campaign promises to curtail the military budget. In April of that same year Truman
instructed that “no publicity” would be made of the document’s contents – even
though it contained bold assessments of threat against the United States and rather
dramatic calls for policy actions. At the start of the Korean conflict, Truman was
reluctant to make a definitive statement of his policy stance towards the Soviets for
fear of contributing to what he called a “war psychosis.”
36
Yet it would take the
confluence of both the Korean conflict and the increased militarism voiced by the
Republicans in 1950 to force the administration into promoting the vision of NSC-
68.
The first Committee on the Present Danger
In late 1950, as both the war in Korea and the rhetoric of the Republican
legislators heated up, the Truman administration shifted into an aggressive program
of public argument. Secretary of State Dean Acheson stated that the Korean conflict
had created “…a situation of unparalleled danger. No one can guarantee that war will
not come.”
37
General George Marshall, a prominent public figure already celebrated
for his role in the Marshall Plan to aid in the reconstruction of Europe, pronounced

60

that “We are not in a world war, but we are in a period of the greatest tension and
[are] facing the possibility of such a catastrophe.”
38
Truman, who had since refrained
from engaging in heated war rhetoric and had refused to promote the language of
NSC 68, addressed the nation on December 15, 1950 with the warning that “Our
homes, our nation, all the things we believe in, are in great danger. This danger has
been created by the Soviet Union.”
39

This rush to war rhetoric was just as much a reaction to the perception of
weakness in Washington cultivated by the Republicans as it was a wholesale
campaign to educate the American public in a new foreign policy strategy. Between
increasingly vocal calls for preemptive war with the Soviets and mounting pressure
exerted by Senator Joseph McCarthy, these factors forced the hand of the Truman
administration to explore new methods of public advocacy. A crucial step in this
response was the formation of a group outside ostensibly outside the administration
that forwarded the administration’s talking points while supposedly reflecting public
concern. On December 12, 1950, the Committee for the Present Danger released its
first statement – arguing for increased military spending, economic policies that
directed resources to the defense establishment, and universal military service.
40

The Committee on the Present Danger (henceforth, CPD) represented a way
for the administration to circumvent criticism from the congressional Republicans,
while legitimating their own policy vision couched in the terms of NSC-68. The
administration’s key policy distinction was that it did not advocate preemptive

61

military confrontation, only an inevitable one. Senator McCarthy had successfully
tarred Secretary Acheson to the point where he could no longer function as a
spokesperson for the administration, which prompted some “policy entrepreneurs”
41

to organize an informal CPD “voice’ for articulating a master stratagem for the
administration. It is important to note that the CPD was not officially a voice of the
President, rather a coordination of concerned policy-makers (such as Nitze) and
citizens advocating for necessary policy changes. James Conant, a founder of the
initial CPD and then president of Harvard University, explained the mission of the
CPD as to "get a group of distinguished citizens together, put it before the public, get
people to write Congress and, in general, respond to the gravity of the
situation.”
42
The CPD’s self-appointed job was to prime public interest in the
President’s new foreign policy vision with a sense of crisis.
But what was the “gravity of the situation?” The CPD of the 1950s came into
existence reflecting NSC-68’s vision of national security as a vital concern for both
government and the public. As John Lewis Gaddis stated, “the effect [of NSC-68]
was to vastly increase the number and variety of interests deemed relevant to
national security, and to blur distinctions between them.” In other words, NSC-68
opened up the possibility for other actors to envision themselves as part of the
national security constituency, and to subsequently argue that national security
pertained to a larger range of concerns in the American public sphere. A significant

62

result of NSC-68 was that it endowed a wider range of actors within public
discourse to advocate for an increasingly pervasive and dire stream of crisis-laden
argument.
During the winter of 1950-1951, policy advocacy was shared by presidential
surrogates, between the actions of the CPD and frequent statements issued by the
Pentagon to the US Congress. The CPD then expanded its efforts in 1951 by
promoting a sense of “present danger” with a series of coordinated Sunday night
television broadcasts on the Mutual Broadcasting Network and distributing 100,000
pamphlets entitled “The Danger of Hiding our Heads.”
43
These programs provoked
public concern about the necessity and immanence of the global threats elaborated in
NSC 68’s foreign policy “vision.”
44

The CPD’s advocacy, while politically expedient for the Truman
administration, also signaled the growth of relationships between Washington, the
national media, and the private sector from both a rhetorical and political standpoint.
The move to utilize the medium of television sparked an increasing number of non-
critical programming on national networks that furthered the terministic ends of NSC
68.
45
Propagandistic methods carried government discourse through national
broadcast news agencies to “[build] awareness of the problem,” engage in
“psychological scare campaigns,” and manufacture “a real and continuing crisis.”
46

The rhetoric of Truman’s foreign policy advisors reached a national stage through
the web of advocacy generated by sympathetic organizations and interlocking media

63

agencies.
47
The proxy argumentation of the initial Cold War “entrepreneurs”
achieved the “normalization” of national security by hailing American citizens as
active stakeholders in a security culture.
48

The media of the 1950s and 60s also contributed to the normalization of Cold
War crisis while legitimating a “necessary” foreign policy response. Arguments for
Cold War policy were disseminated in mainstream television programs such as
Battle Report-Washington, The Facts We Face, One Nation Indivisible, and
Pentagon, which provided weekly depictions of the global communist threat, as well
as details of the preparations for the defense of the United States.
49
Nancy Bernard
details how these programs described the Soviet Communists as “the fourteen
barbarians,” “power-drunk atheists,” “bloodthirsty barbarians,” and “power-drunk
despots.”
50
She describes these programs as regarded as public service programming,
which made “passionate anticommunism… normalized as objective.”
51
It is certainly
possible that these programs contributed to the rhetorical objectives of the
administration by inculcating an ideological predisposition towards the necessity of
Cold War strategy. Such communicative action laid the groundwork for future policy
argumentation; where the premises of national security became unproblematic while
the range of actors who could argue about national security widened.
Upon initial examination, the Truman administration’s tactics to promote a
transformation in foreign policy suggests that this process did not rely solely on the
President’s own rhetorical agency. If anything, the case of President Truman reveals

64

that a president requires an expansive network of advocates to build a receptive
audience for his own arguments. As recent Truman administration scholarship has
shown, even the conventional wisdom regarding Truman’s role in establishing the
Cold War policy paradigm is circumspect.
52
President Truman was an important
figure in establishing a rhetorical vocabulary for the Cold War, yet he was also a
fixture in a movement of foreign policy thinking that became bigger than his
presidency.
53
This movement was in part engineered by foreign policy advisors, then
turned loose into the domestic political sphere by the network of surrogate advocates
that came to include non-governmental organizations and the news media itself.
Behind this movement was a central thematic meta-narrative; an ideological
foundation for the Cold War defined by the rhetoric of crisis itself.
54
For
practitioners of Cold War policy, their public argument remained dependent on the
capacity of crisis to sustain public assent and to quell deliberation.
55
The Cold War
thus required an ongoing dialectic of rhetorically constructed crisis and requisite
policy responses to sustain and re-legitimate the ideological cornerstones of Cold
War strategy. Following both Theodore Windt and Denise Bostdorff’s notion of
constructed crisis, the ebb and flow of international crisis became a distinctly
rhetorical burden; a burden not uniquely situated with the president but distributed
amongst a network of advocates and complicit media representation. The next
section illustrates how Cold War advisors used rhetorical amplification to
manufacture Cold War crisis in the absence of an external “event.” This episode

65

shows how arguers took advantage of both arguments that discouraged
deliberation coupled with media exposure to manipulate framing of foreign policy
concerns.
Team B and the second Committee on the President Danger
The original Committee on the Present Danger was instrumental in
promoting the rhetoric internal to the classified NSC-68 document. It also set a
precedent for how foreign policy could be shaped by a group of influential advisors
close to the official channels of policy decision-making. The first CPD provided both
a template for public promotion of a foreign policy vision and an enduring dramatis
personae for future policy advocacy in the United States. According to John Lewis
Gaddis, NSC-68 firmly entrenched an aggressive posture in the national security
institutions of the United States with language that expanded the range of actors and
interests pertaining to national security.
56
Yet the policies initiated by NSC-68
required rhetorical interventions to sustain them in subsequent administrations during
the Cold War. An instructive example of this kind of organized intervention is the
“Team B” assessments in 1976 and the reformation of the Committee on the
President Danger to put pressure on the incoming Carter administration’s foreign
policy.
The “Team B” exercise was an experiment in policy evaluation that resulted
in the reinvigoration of more hard-line interpretations of Cold War strategy.
57
The
idea, proposed by John Foster (a former presidential advisor) and promoted by Paul

66

Nitze, consisted of presenting information on the state of Soviet strategic
capabilities to two teams of analysts - one internal to the intelligence community and
one external. The motivation for this exercise came after the National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) of 1976 predicted no serious strategic threat to the established
détente with the Soviets.
58
This result did not sit well with those who advocated a
hard-line stance in the drafting of NSC-68. The exercise was conceived by policy
advisors and analysts to ascertain whether a corrective was necessary to the NIE.
Dialectical argumentation was put forth as a venue for constructive criticism of
existing intelligence conclusions. The proponents of the exercise offered that a
debate between the two intelligence analyst teams would, in theory, be a genuine
asset to reevaluate the NIE provided by the intelligence community in 1976.
In practice, the exercise turned out to be a platform from which the Team B
government “outsiders,” including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pipes, William Van
Cleave, and other members of the former Committee on the Present Danger,
articulated a particularly dire strategic scenario for the United States and the
potential threat posed by the Soviet Union.
59
Team A, which consisted of mid-level
government analysts, were largely unprepared from the kind of arguments fielded by
the Team B members. While Team A offered no conclusive evidence of Soviet
strategic capability, Team B used this lack of evidence to suggest that possibility that
it might be there. Considered as an argument scenario, the exercise was effectively
reframed by the Team B participants to focus not strategic on capabilities, but on the

67

intentions of the Soviet Union. The result was an effective “brow-beating” of the
Central Intelligence Agency.
60
The affair increased pressure on the intelligence
community to confirm the precarious strategic threats exposed by Team B’s
conclusions because its conclusions somehow found their way into the public sphere.
The Team B scenario can certainly be read as a case study in the institutional
nature of foreign policy decision-making; but it also represents as a significant
instance of policy argument in the larger rhetorical campaign to control the discourse
formation of foreign policy in the United States. Throughout the exercise, members
of the Team B were “leaking all over the place… putting together this inflammatory
document.”
61
The Team B exercise was instrumental in gathering public momentum
for a more dire portrait of the Soviet threat, and brought the concerns of a newly
reconstituted Committee on the Present Danger back onto a national stage. While the
Team B exercise was formulated as an experiment in the value of debate in foreign
policy formation, the result was a stifling of such debate at the institutional level and
a public stage for the CPD to voice its concerns at the start of the Carter presidency.
The claim that a lack of evidence of threat itself constituted the possibility of
unobserved threat capability established the grounds for organizations like the CPD
to portray argue that a crisis was imminent and a policy change was necessary.
62

It is important to note the coordinated nature of these activities. The CPD
reconstituted itself in March of 1976 with the release of a public release of a
manifesto entitled, “Common Sense and the Common Danger.”
63
The language was

68

similar to the previous CPD public pronouncements at the dawn of the Cold War.
“Our country is in a period of danger, and the danger is increasing… “[the] threats
we face...[are] more subtle and indirect than was once the case.”
64
This document
stated in clear terms that the general populace must be mobilized to recognize and
counter the ominous presence of threat: “Unless decisive steps are taken to alert the
nation, and to change the course of its policy, our economic and military capacity
will become inadequate to assure peace with security.” At the same time, the
document affirmed the resolve and motive of the enemy, “The Soviet Union has not
altered its long held goal of a world dominated from a single center—Moscow.”
65

The CPD’s statement plainly declared that a new crisis threatened the United States
and that policy-makers were compelled to address the new threats.
The new CPD’s message, however, was slow to gain public exposure.
Members of the reconstituted organization were allegedly disappointed that the
release of its public statement did not appear in any major public media outlet. Nitze
complained that he and the other members of the CPD were described as "cold
warriors," "hawkish," or as representatives of "the military-industrial complex."
66

Public perception of the CPD would change in 1977, after a steady campaign of
“newspaper advertisements, news briefings, radio and television programs, mailings,
and speeches”
67
increased the public exposure of the CPD perspective.
In march of 1977, National Security council representative Richard Pipes
released the policy statement “What is the Soviet Union Up To?” to mark the

69

beginning of a three year campaign by CPD members (both within and outside of
government) to promote a call for military build up and a tough stance against the
Soviet Union. Anne Kahn writes in her history of the CIA that this move finally
caught the attention of the mainstream media:
This time, the response was very different both in extent and tone. AP and
UPI filed substantial stories, which were widely reprinted. Many of the major
newspapers published favorable companion editorials. Additionally, ABC-
TV and CBS-TV carried special interviews with Eugene Rostow and Paul
Nitze. More important, now the Committee was described as "a public
interest group," "an organization comprised of many leading Americans from
all segments of the political spectrum," and a "nonpartisan committee."
68

The repetitive, multiple media strategy worked to legitimate the ideals of the CPD
and the Team B members. These members would eventually find themselves in
influential policy positions within the foreign policy team of the Reagan
administration in 1980.
69
The influence of the CPD signaled the ultimate success of
the leaked Team B report, and established a precedent for future recourse to the
“Team B” strategy of policy advocacy within the United States government.
70
The
amplification of threat without evidence proved to be a successful strategy for
influencing public opinion. The members of Team B and the second CPD masked
their claims in the trappings of deliberation and elite consensus. This kind of
argumentation discouraged critical attention while providing easy dissemination of
alarmist claims in national media outlets. The following section returns to the general
question of how foreign policy arguments in the news media are understood in

70

communication and political scholarship, in order to contextualize the previous
episodes of Cold War crisis rhetoric as media-dependent strategies.
Foreign policy advisors, media and public opinion
The previous scenarios illustrate that the rhetorical campaigns of the Cold War were
not monolithic representations of presidential will. The Truman administration’s
policy rhetoric at the dawn of the Cold War featured advocacy reflecting both
political tactics and the communicative efforts of vocal policy partisans. The story of
the Truman administration demonstrates how determined advisors argued for a
policy transformation that cultivated a favorable disposition towards the new policy
vision. Its arguments produced a terministic reservoir from which future public
debate over Cold War foreign policy emerged. These arguments again resurfaced in
1976. Members of the new CPD took up the crisis rhetoric surrounding NSC-68 to
re-articulate the imminence of threat in a manner that strategically leveraged national
media attention and constrained the focus of U.S. foreign policy debate.
This dissertation presents presidential advisors, in conjunction with media
exposure, as important contributors to presidential arguments for foreign policy
change. This claim builds upon a library of case-based research on successive Cold
War administrations. These studies elaborate organizational and political science
observations on the role of presidential advisors in the foreign policy formation and
execution process.
71
However, these studies do not focus on how advisors advance
the message of an administration to inform or manipulate public opinion. Even the

71

president’s role as a communicant of foreign policy has been largely ignored
outside of public address scholarship until the work of Richard Neustadt and Jeffrey
Tullis reintroduced the rhetorical dimension of presidential authority.
72

The relationship between foreign policy advocacy, media, and public opinion
remains a pressing concern for scholars of communication and foreign policy.
73
This
concern becomes more salient when media is leveraged to legitimate a large-scale
action – such as the war against Iraq in 2003. These kinds of events highlight
Thomas Kane’s argument about the Cold War’s dependence on public argument. For
Kane, the scale and scope of the Cold War necessitated a persuaded public, which
involved the deployment of specific vocabularies, metaphors, and scenic depictions
to sustain such a transformation.
74
If foreign policy transformation is in part
dependent on the capacity of an administration to sustain public support – then it is
necessary investigate any indicators of how policy constituencies sanction or
legitimate a policy transformation. A rhetorical campaign to sustain something like
the Cold War or even the Global War on Terror hinges on the capacity to reach and
persuade domestic constituencies. Previous research in political communication and
international relations, however, has offered few conclusions or predictive models to
encompass the relationship between media messages and foreign policy (the only
exception being the much-debated “CNN Effect,” which posits the role of the media
as independent influencers and determinants of foreign policy decision-making).
75

72

But what of the role of advisors and their access to communication outlets?
There is a considerable body of scholarly literature that explores the linkages
between public opinion and foreign policy, which suggests an opportunity to explore
the government elites and their ability to persuade publics over a policy change.
76

Public opinion and political communication studies, however, reach seperate
conclusions about the role of policy actors and their ability to persuade the public.
These studies also conceive government influence of opinion as a uni-directional
dynamic.
77
Historical episodes of foreign policy advocacy, however, comprise
political considerations, levels of media exposure, and the sharing of argument
burdens across speakers promoting a policy message. It is anything but
unidirectional.
Public opinion research in political science has demonstrated that the U.S.
public reacts to statements by different kinds of government elites in different
ways.
78
However, these studies consistently observe that elected officials, including
presidents, had little significant impact on changes in public opinion based on
particular episodes of persuasive communication. “Popular” presidents enjoyed some
increased influence over public opinion, but they accounted for only a 10% change
in opinion, even after extensive “rhetorical campaigning.”
79

Interestingly, many of these studies note that the primary movers of public
opinion on foreign policy are prominent journalists and “experts.”
80
Also, the level
of influence for political elites is increased when they were given access to forums

73

on media outlets. These studies suggest that the most productive strategy for any
political campaign to transform a policy is to “enlist the support of commentators
and analysts.”
81
The moment in which political elites have the opportunity to garner
the most influence are in times of crisis and, similarly, instances where information
is not commonly available to the general public.
82

These studies predicate influence on the connection to media. Political
communication studies affirm this conclusion through analysis media message
hierarchy and the capacity of media content to constrain opinion. For example,
Robert Entman’s theory of “cascading frame activation” and Sandra Ball-Rokeach’s
theory of “media system dependency” illustrate a hierarchy of media infrastructure;
drawing lines of influence from official government sources to national papers of
records, and on further downward through local media institutions, interpersonal
communication and an intergroup dynamics.
83
These models explicitly presuppose a
space for an “advisor” class of governmental elite and influential institutions,
situated conveniently at the “top” of a chart of information flow to the general
public. Such actors are essentially the nodes from which the literal and symbolic
information issues forth. These groups filter the information, present it in a specific
narrative structure (or “frame”), and remain the de rigueur sources for coverage on
issues of foreign policy.
Political communication scholarship’s structural models of media influence
corroborate Lance Bennett’s observation that journalists tend to index their reporting

74

to official government statements, which then form the components of public
debate on foreign policy.
84
Based on these works, it is relatively easy to deduce that
the composition of these advisor statements are of particular importance. Therefore
the rhetorical dimension of arguments coming from these sources merits further
scrutiny. Rhetorical critic Jim Kuypers follows this line of research to suggest that
media “framing” constrains the rhetorical agency of presidents during moments of
crisis.
85
Kuypers argues that media influence administration ability to characterize
events and policies. However, further consideration of how media framing extends,
reinforces, or supplements such argumentation remains to be elaborated
systematically.
For example, how do advisors or those speaking on behalf of an
administration make use of, elaborate, or repair frames in the service of a rhetorical
campaign? Frames are themselves not “frozen,” but reflect efforts to coach public
interpretation of events or conditions in a given time or context. It is important to
note that studies in public opinion, foreign policy, or political communication
research have yet to elaborate how deliberative agents within the government use
their agency to sustain policy through rhetorical action.
86
While there is considerable
interest in how elites may influence opinion on foreign policy, public opinion’s role
in the process of forming or defending a policy remains uncertain.
87

Political scientist Robert Putnam put forward the assumption that foreign
policy is a “two-level game;” a result of both domestic and international pressures on

75

the policy formation process.
88
Foreign policy analysis, however, still largely
brackets domestic interest and culture.
89
The separation of domestic concerns from
strategic doctrine in this field reflects the continued influence of realist discourse.
90

More recent constructivist foreign policy analysis has begun to reincorporate the
importance of domestic discourse in policy formation, opening a space for
considering the impact of domestic discourse on policy change.
91

Some research in political communication has shown that public discourse
may influence or shape foreign policy, such as Daniel Hallin’s analysis of the media
coverage of debate over the Vietnam War, as well as Jonathon Mermin’s analysis of
public debates about the invasion of Somalia.
92
These studies reflect a basic
conclusion about media’s role in foreign policy: public opinion only intervenes on
foreign policy during moments of intra-elite dissensus, which is the point at which
media reports critically to the public. In other words, when the public sphere
becomes the forum of debate amongst political actors, there is evidence of public
opinion having an impact on the conduct of foreign policy. This means that
administrations should be concerned with managing the scope of debate about any
proposed policy.
The body of research on foreign policy and public opinion suggests that an
administration’s ability to influence opinion directly is circumspect, yet policy-
makers still put forth arguments to explain their policy vision. Why is this? If public
opinion tracks along the stability of governing elite consensus, it is in the interests of

76

governing elites to sustain consensus at both the elite and popular level - or to at
least rhetorically engage the public to convey that there is such a consensus. When
journalists perceive a foreign policy perspective becomes dominant, critical coverage
drops off in a form of tacit approval.
Both public opinion and political communication scholarship thus yield a
basic strategy for foreign policy promoters. To promote a contentious policy
transformation requires administration spokespersons to engage the public through
multiple popular channels of communication via news outlets and media
appearances. What is missing from much of the media and foreign policy
scholarship, however, is a consideration of the actual arguments used to effect policy
change. The questions facing scholars of media and foreign policy becomes: what
kinds of arguments facilitate the quieting of critical media attention and how are
campaigns of argument waged by administrations to achieve their larger objectives?
Conclusion
This chapter presented episodes of multi-actor campaigns of policy
promotion during the Cold War. Arguments surrounding the formation of NSC-68
and the later Team B exercise featured the amplification of external threat and the
imminence of national security crisis. These instances illustrate how surrogate policy
advocates, such as presidential advisors and their connections to sympathetic
organizations and media outlets, form a body of public argumentation potentially
crucial to the consent of the governed in the United States. This kind of presidential

77

proxy advocacy hints at the potential of advisors and advocates external to the
government to make the arguments necessary to advocate significant change in U.S.
foreign policy. These advocates, along with the president, carry the burden of
articulating the foreign policy discourse formation.
Their activities also shed light on persistent questions about the relationship
between foreign policy and the news media that leaders rely on to advocate their
policy goals. Such scholarship has yielded two conclusions relevant to the thesis in
this study. First, an administration seeking to change public opinion about foreign
policy is best served by appealing to multiple channels of communication, especially
in news venues that feature trusted experts and journalists. Second, media coverage
often reflects the degree of consensus within the governing elite over foreign policy.
To take advantage of media exposure – governments need to portray a united front.
The examples presented in this chapter reveal that the most readily available tactic to
accomplish this is to rely on crisis rhetoric to define policy objectives.
The following three chapters explore how President Bush’s presidential
advisors exploited their positions to facilitate the administration’s goal of a
preventative war in Iraq. Their stories elaborate how crisis rhetoric was deployed to
extend, defend, and legitimate the President’s ultimate objective. These examples
reveal separate burdens of a crisis argument strategy that all relied upon access to
media to sustain the momentum of their rhetorical movement. Each of these chapters
highlights aspects of crisis promotion that have been carried over from tactics used

78

during the Cold War. The early ideological arguments of Paul Wolfowitz in 2001,
through the threat inflation and blunt tactics of Richard Cheney’s rhetoric, to the
final push to consolidate a national consensus for war with Colin Powell’s
engagement of the United Nations. The rhetoric of these advisors comprised a
coordinated campaign that sustained a framing of war policy that made invasion both
reasonable and necessary.

79

Chapter 2 Endnotes

1
Theodore O. Windt, "The Presidency and Speeches on International Crises:
Repeating the Rhetorical Past," Speaker and Gavel 11, no.1 (1973): 6-14.

2
Robert P. Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination,"
in Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History, ed. Martin J.
Medhurst and H.W. Brands (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2000), 55-94.

3
“NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” April 14,
1950, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm.

4
Ibid.
5
James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New
York: Viking, 2004), 316.

6
Ibid., 330.
7
Martin J. Medhurst, "Rhetoric and Cold War: A Strategic Approach," in Cold War
Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology, ed. Martin J. Medhurst, Robert Ivie,
Philip Wander, and Robert Scott (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1997), 19-28.

8
Philip. J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, "Defining the American Public
Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus," The International Studies Review 42, no. 1 (1998):
29-61.

9
Thomas Kane, "Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas,"
Argumentation and Advocacy 28 (1991): 80-90.

10
Philip Wander, "The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy," The Quarterly
Journal of Speech 70, no. 4 (1984): 339-361.

11
Ernest Bormann, John Cragan, and Donald Shields, "An Expansion of the
Rhetorical Vision Component of the Symbolic Convergence Theory: The Cold War
Paradigm Case," Communication Monographs, no. 63 (1996): 1-28.

12
Steven Casey, "White House Publicity Operations During the Korean War, June
1950–June 1951," Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2005): 692.

80

13
Robert L. Ivie, "Fire, Flood, and Red Fever: Motivating Metaphors of Global
Emergency in the Truman Doctrine Speech," Presidential Studies Quarterly 29, no.
3 (1999): 571.

14
Steven Casey, "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and
the Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51," Diplomatic History 29, no. 4 (2005): 656;
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1972).

15
Casey, "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the
Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51."

16
Casey, "White House Publicity Operations During the Korean War, June 1950–
June 1951."

17
Ivie, "Fire, Flood, and Red Fever."

18
Casey, "Selling NSC-68"; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982); Scott Lucas, Freedom's War: The American
Crusade Against the Soviet Union (Washington Square, NY: New York University
Press, 1999).

19
In some sense, the Truman administration’s planning reflected a tacit
understanding of what communication scholar Robert Entman would later describe
as a “cascading frame activation” – where news and information shapes public
opinion as it passes through various stages in the policy and news-making hierarchy.
American public opinion about foreign policy is itself, according to Entman’s
argument, inherently subject to hierarchies of information filtering and “framing.”

20
Arnold Offner, "“Another Such Victory”: President Truman, American Foreign
Policy, and the Cold War," Diplomatic History 23, no. 2 (1999): 127-155.

21
Ibid.

22
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, Robert P. Newman, "NSC (National
Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination," in Critical Reflections on the Cold
War: Linking Rhetoric and History, ed. Martin J. Medhurst and H.W. Brands
(College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2000).

81

23
Melvin Leffler, "9/11 and American Foreign Policy," Diplomatic History 29
(2005): 395-413; Gordon R. Mitchell and Robert P. Newman, "By 'Any Measures'
Necessary: NSC-68 and Cold War Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy," in
Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William W. Keller and
Gordon R. Mitchell (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 70-92.

24
Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination," 69.

25
Robert Ivie, "Declaring a National Emergency: Truman's Rhetorical Crisis and the
Great Debate of 1951," in The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, ed. Amos
Kiewe (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 1-18.

26
Mitchell and Newman, "By 'Any Measures' Necessary: NSC-68 and Cold War
Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy," 93.

27
Ibid.

28
Ibid., 95.

29
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.

30
Casey, "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the
Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51."; Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68:
Nitze's Second Hallucination."

31
Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination."

32
Ivie, "Fire, Flood, and Red Fever: Motivating Metaphors of Global Emergency in
the Truman Doctrine Speech." See also Robert Ivie, "Metaphor and the Rhetorical
Invention of Cold War "Idealists"," Communication Monographs 54 (1987): 570-
591.

33
Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination."

34
Casey, "Selling NSC-68."

82

35
Casey notes that the administration was influenced by the prevailing notions
emerging from political scientist and political psychologists like Gabriel Almond, etc
– that the public was easily moved and susceptible to messages that could provoke
social instability.

36
Casey, "Selling NSC-68."

37
Casey, "White House Publicity Operations During the Korean War, June 1950–
June 1951."

38
Ibid.

39
Ibid.

40
S. S. Schweber, "The Hawk from Harvard," Washington Post Book World,
February 6, 1994.

41
Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D Jones, Agendas and Instability in American
Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); William W. Keller and
Gordon Mitchell, "Preemption, Prevention, Prevarication," in Hitting First:
Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William W. Keller and Gordon
Mitchell (Pittsburgh: University of PIttsburg Press, 2006), 3-26.

42
Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park,
Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

43
Jerry W. Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and
the Politics of Containment (Boston: South End Press, 1983), 95.

44
Ibid.

45
Ibid.

46
Nancy Bernard, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 83-84.

47
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon, 1988).

83

48
See David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the
Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1992).

49
Bernard, U.S. Television News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947-1960, 117.

50
Ibid., 122, 130.

51
Ibid., 125.

52
The work of Casey, as well as Mitchell and Newman suggest a more complex
process of policy promotion, analogous to the models proposed by Bormann, et al
and Zarefsky’s notion of the rhetorical movement.

53
Lynn Boyd Hinds and Theodore Windt, The Cold War as Rhetoric: The
Beginnings, 1945-1950 (New York: Praegar, 1991); Medhurst, "Rhetoric and Cold
War: A Strategy Approach."

54
Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of
Identity, Newman, "NSC (National Insecurity) 68: Nitze's Second Hallucination.";
Shawn J. Parry-Giles, "Militarizing America's Propaganda Program, 1945-55," in
Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History, ed. Martin J.
Medhurst and H.W. Brands (College Station: TX: Texas A&M University Press,
2000), 95-133; Wander, "The Rhetoric of American Foreign Policy."

55
Thomas Kane, "Public Argument and Civil Society: The Cold War Legacy as a
Barrier to Deliberative Politics," Argumentation 15 (1999): 107–115.

56
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1982), 92.

57
Mitchell and Newman, "By 'Any Measures' Necessary: NSC-68 and Cold War
Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy," 102-04.

58
Ibid., 101-02.

59
Gordon Mitchell, “Team B Intelligence Coups,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92,
no. 2, (1996): 149.

60
Mitchell and Newman, "By 'Any Measures' Necessary," 102-104.

84

61
Ibid.

62
Ibid.

63
Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis.

64
“Policy Statement of the Committee on the Present Danger: ‘Common Sense and
the Common Danger,’” in The Geopolitics Reader, ed. Georoid Tuathail, Simon
Dalby, and Paul Routledge, (London: Routledge 1998), 92.

65
Anne Hessing Kahn, Killing Détente.

66
Ibid., 188.

67
Ibid., 29.

68
Ibid., 188-89.

69
David Corn and Jefferson Morley, “The Last Profiteers of Reaganism,” The
Nation 247, (1988), www.questia.com.

70
Mitchell and Newman, "By 'Any Measures' Necessary: NSC-68 and Cold War
Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy."

71
Haney, "Structure and Process in the Analysis of Foreign Policy Crises"; James P.
Pfiffner, "Presidential Decision Making: Rationality, Advisory Systems, and
Personality," Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2005): 217.

72
Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York:
Free Press, 1990); Jeffrey Tullis, The Rhetorical Presidency, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987).

73
Eytan Gilboa, "The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of
International Relations," Political Communication 22, no. 1 (2005): 27-44.

74
Kane, "Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas."

85

75
Eytan Gilboa, "The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of
International Relations," Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News,
Foreign Policy and Intervention (London: Routledge, 2002).

76
Brenda Seaver, "The Public Dimension of Foreign Policy," The Harvard
International Journal of Press/Politics 3, no. 1 (1998): 65-91.

77
Ibid.

78
Powlick and Katz, "Defining the American Public Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus."

79
Donald Jordan and Benjamin Page, "Shaping Foreign Policy Options: The Role of
TV News," Journal of Conflict Resolution 36 (1992): 227-241; Benjamin Page,
Robert Shapiro, and Glenn Dempsey, "What Moves Public Opinion?," American
Political Science Review 81, (1987): 23-43.

80
Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, "Presidents as Opinion Leaders: Some New
Evidence," Policy Studies Journal 12, (1984): 649-661.

81
Ibid.

82
Ibid.

83
Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, "A Theory of Media Power and Media Use: Different
Stories, Questions, and Ways of Thinking," Mass Communication and Society 1, no.
1/2 (1998): 5-40; Robert Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public
Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

84
Lance Bennett, "Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,"
Journal of Communication 40, no. 2 (1990): 103-125.

85
Jim Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric and the Press in the Post-Cold War
World.

86
With the exception of this kind of strategic “framing” study: Zhongdang Pan and
Gerald Kosicki, "Framing as Strategic Action in Public Deliberation," in Framing
Public Life : Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World, ed.
Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy, and August E. Grant (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2001), 67-82.

86

87
Brenda Seaver, "The Public Dimension of Foreign Policy."

88
Robert Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level
Games," International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427-460.

89
Though notable exceptions to this observation have been explored in cognitivist
studies of foreign policy decision making, such as the authoritative Yaacov
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing and Perception in
Foreign Policy Decision-Making (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).

90
Valerie Hudson, "Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International
Relations," Foreign Policy Analysis 1, no. 1 (2005): 1-30.

91
Steve Smith, “Foreign Policy is What States Make of It: Social Construction and
International Relations Theory,” In Foreign Policy in a Constructed World, ed.
Kubalkova Vendulka (Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe, 2001), 38-56.

92
Daniel Hallin, The Uncensored War (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1986); Jonathan Mermin, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of U.S.
Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999).

87
Chapter 3
Paul Wolfowitz: Promoting Ideology and Strategic Doctrine
The first term of George W. Bush’s administration witnessed a qualitative
shift in the rhetoric of U.S. foreign policy that can be traced to the public arguments
of key presidential advisors. During the 2000 presidential campaign, these advisors
devised what they described as a “humble” foreign policy.
1
This policy contrasted
with the nation-building and “democratic enlargement” policies of President
Clinton.
2
Not surprisingly, the Bush administration’s rhetoric changed dramatically
after 9/11 with the its rationale for a “War on Terror.”
3
The administration’s rhetoric
envisioned a world both fraught with imminent peril yet capable of being
transformed by the application of American power.
4
Its arguments launched a
revolution in U.S. policy through a rhetorical movement that provided a self-
justifying interventionist discourse following 9/11 - from the invasion of Afghanistan
to the war of Iraq in 2003.
5

The Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz emerged as a pivotal figure
in this movement. Wolfowitz imagined a world composed of dangerous regimes with
the capacity to overturn American global dominance.
6
In this chapter, I examine
episodes of Wolfowitz’s foreign policy discourse to elaborate how rhetoric cultivates
the ideological premises of crisis key to legitimating an administration’s future
policy objectives. This analysis examines how the Deputy Secretary’s rhetoric
composed a foundational discourse for the policy “revolution” that was the Bush
doctrine by establishing the “scene” of foreign policy. The chapter provides evidence
88
of how Wolfowitz’s rhetoric elaborated a foreign policy discourse in both official
venues and media appearances, detailing the substance of his arguments as well as
charting their public exposure. This analysis shows how he provided the rich
symbolic and terministic material from which the administration’s policies could be
argued as credible to policy-makers and the general public.
The chapter is divided into three sections: an examination of the origins of
Wolfowitz’s early foreign policy ideas, analysis of his June 2001 speech outlining
the basics of his ideological positions, and finally analysis of his testimony to the
U.S. Congress in October of 2001 on proposed changes to the United States military
strategy. The first section surveys his role in previous government posts in order to
explore early manifestations of his foreign policy rhetoric. This section highlights
Wolfowitz’s involvement in the 1972 AMB treaty debates, the “Team B”
competitive intelligence assessments of 1976, and finally his influence on the 1992
Defense Planning Guidance document. The second section provides a detailed
textual analysis of his June 2, 2001 West Point Commencement address and media
appearances between the commencement address and September 11, 2001. The third
examines his congressional testimony on the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review,
along with defining media appearances between September 11 and the end of 2001.
An alternative to realism
Wolfowitz’s early views showed his preference for a proactive, morally-
grounded application of American power. This was revealed in both his associations
with like-minded policy operatives and ultimately in his attempts at crafting foreign
89
policy doctrine. Signs that his views departed from the predominant “realist”
thinking in Cold War foreign policy emerged at the start his government career in
1969, when he worked for Democratic Senator Henry Jackson’s “Safeguard”
campaign against the AMB Treaty ratification.
7
Wolfowitz’s turn away from the
“status quo” of conventional wisdom amounted to a rejection détente – a strategy of
peaceful coexistence with the Soviet’s endorsed by President Nixon’s Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger. His time with Jackson exposed him to a community of Cold
War advisors such as Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson, through his involvement in the
“Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense” that spearheaded the drive to derail the
ABM treaty.
8

Those involved with the Committee viewed Kissinger’s realism of detente as
dangerous for national security. Détente had emerged in the context of Soviet
difficulties with maintaining their nuclear arsenal and recognition that the Vietnam
War had significantly drained U.S. military resources. Détente in turn spawned a
series of arms reduction treaties, causing concern for those like Wolfowitz who
argued that assumptions of rational thinking assumed in détente were inherently
flawed. To its opponents, détente’s problems were in the deductions of its strategic
analysis. Détente assumptions did not account for the enemy’s motives nor the
threat such motives could present.
9

Détente reflected the realist paradigm of international relations, which
focused on power-balancing and on the material dimensions of nation-state power.
10

Realist foreign policy thinking had lead to strategic policies like deterrence. For
90
critics of “realist” policies such as Paul Nitze, deterrence was problematic at the
level of its assumptions. He argued that “the deterrent effect of nuclear arms on
(irrational) parties is questionable ... rational thinking is necessary for deterrence to
work."
11
Criticism during the Nixon administration was leveled at the policy’s
fundamental presumptions of how nation-states calculated self-interest and
willingness to fight a war.
For Wolfowitz, the logic of deterrence and assumptions of enemy
“rationality” in strategic analysis were a risky proposition. Rationality was a poor
substitute for imperfect intelligence on the enemy’s motivations (be they cultural or
political) that might not conform to deductive notions of strategic rationality.
12
The
logic of deterrence and arms control negotiations may have made sense in strategic
modeling, but they might not account for the intentions of a potential enemy.
Wolfowitz was skeptical of realist policies of the time because they rested so
strongly on assumptions of rationality and not on the consequences of being wrong
about the Soviet Union.
13
This emphasis on “intention” and “possibility” would
emerge later as central themes.
The ideational roots of Wolfowitz’s policy criticism in the early 1970s
exhibit two distinct influences: political philosopher Leo Strauss and RAND nuclear
strategy analyst Albert Wohlstetter. Biographic accounts of Wolfowitz suggest that
his views derived from his exposure to these thinkers, along with a network of peers
such as Richard Perle, Adam Shulsky, and Douglas Feith.
14
Accounts, however, stop
91
short of detailing the substance of this influence and its effect of on his ideological
premises.
As a graduate student, Wolfowitz took classes with Leo Strauss at the
University of Chicago. Strauss’s political philosophy was a response to liberal
relativism, and so was embraced as a conservative philosophy for statecraft grounded
in valuing moral clarity.
15
The most obvious parallels between Straussian thinking
and Wolfowitz’s rhetoric pertain to Strauss’s linkage of political order to external
crisis and the notion that states accrue power by demonstrating or exercising power.
According to John Langmore, Strauss’s scholarship held that a ”political order is
stable only if it is united by an external threat and that if no external threat exists then
one should be manufactured.”
16
Strauss also emphasized a normative view of
“natural law” that preferred the rule of the elite over statutory conventions, which
allowed Straussian students to infer that contracts among leaders (such as
international treaties) could be discarded in the interests of defending the state.
17
Earl
Shorris notes that Strauss’s students have applied his thinking to hold that “the
greatest danger to the United States comes not only from weakness in the face of
enemies but also from the failure [of the U.S.] to believe in its own superiority.”
18
In
the Straussian world, nation-states operate in a kind of honor-defined brinksmanship,
where enlightened rulers leverage the presence of external threat to ensure state
security and domestic complicity.
State power, according to Strauss, was not so much a measure of material
resources and capabilities, but the exercise of a state’s strengths towards an
92
honorable purpose.
19
Only in exercising such power could a state stave off its
enemies. While Wolfowitz has disavowed any immediate connection between his
policy beliefs and any influence by Leo Strauss,
20
his own policy rhetoric forwarded
presumptions that linked the prevalence of external threat to a heroic purpose for the
U.S. abroad. His repeated emphasis on identifying threat coupled with the use
military power seemed to mirror Struassian perspectives on statecraft. These ideas
were further elaborated by Wolfowitz’s graduate school mentor, Albert Wohlstetter.
Albert Wohlstetter was a physicist and nuclear policy analyst who had
considerable influence in U.S nuclear policy. He was a researcher associated with the
RAND Corporation, and was known for provoking public concern over an alleged
“missile gap” between United States and the Soviet Union.
21
For Wohlstetter, the
United States faced a “world of persistent danger” in the face of Soviet threat.
22
He
argued that a more active posture than simple deterrence was necessary to counter
the Soviets, and that “urgent and continuing efforts” were required of the American
people.
23
He advocated the application of scientific methods to security analysis,
calculating the sort of proactive use of force that would yield greater security. When
his ideas eventually influenced the U.S. defense establishment, he declared that, “the
old order had been overthrown and the new one installed.”
24

In 1959, Wolhstetter argued that the United States would need a considerably
larger nuclear and conventional military force to counter the Soviet Union, and
would likely have to engage in localized, low-intensity regional conflicts.
25

Wohlstetter’s arguments were distinguished by a rigorous and systematic analytical
93
method that provided a precision to strategic analysis uncommon for its time. At
the core of Wolstetter’s thinking were three ideas that would later resurface in
Wolfowitz’s foreign policy: an acute awareness of the threat posed by nuclear
proliferation, a respect for the technologies that granted U.S. strategic superiority,
and finally a belief that foreign policy should be grounded in moral purpose.
26

In 1968, for example, Wohlstetter entered the public debate over the
Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system (which would later be banned under the ABM
Treaty with the Soviet Union). Wolhstetter argued that treaties limiting the
development of nuclear weapons were detrimental to the United States, and that the
benefits of technologies related to nuclear weapons should be explored further.
Wolhstetter’s rhetoric combined a suspicion of regulatory regimes with an optimistic
assessment of deploying the technologies at U.S.’s disposal. For Wolfowitz,
Wolhstetter offered a “blend of pragmatism and moralism that made an attractive
strategy for approaching international affairs.”
27
Wolfowitz later remarked that it was
“terrifically gratifying” for him to “realize that there were intensely moral
considerations in the way he approached these [international] issues.”
28
A moral and
a pragmatic approach to using military resources came to define the analyst’s policy
arguments after his graduate experience.
Wolhstetter’s influence also extended into Wolfowitz’s professional life.
Wolfowitz’s work to defeat the passage of the ABM treaty had attracted a “network
of conservative thinkers in Washington who were laying the groundwork for a revolt
against Henry A. Kissinger's then-dominant foreign policy.”
29
After this campaign
94
failed, Albert Wolstetter invited Wolfowitz to join the Team B exercise of 1976.
The Team B exercise, which was supposedly conceived as an “external” review of
U.S. strategic intelligence on the Soviet Union, proved to be a pivotal episode of
public argument over foreign policy. Specifically, it revealed the argument moves
that Wolfowitz would later return to during the second Bush administration.
The Team B exercise by and large was instigated by conservative foreign
policy experts who had fallen out of favor during the Nixon and Ford
administrations. By 1974, advocates of a strong defense had grown concerned over
increasing congressional pressure.
30
In response, Wolhstetter, along with generals
George Keegan and Daniel Graham, argued that the CIA had underestimated the
level of Soviet development of nuclear technology, and called for an external review
of intelligence on the Soviet military build-up.
31
The goal of the exercise they
proposed was to provide a competitive assessment, based on the principle of
dialectical exchange, which could improve the process of intelligence analysis.
32

The result of the exercise, however, was a public platform for former
government officials to raise alarmist objections about cutbacks and provoke public
suspicion of increasing rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
33
Paul Warnke,
formerly of the Arms Control and Reduction Agency, argued that the outsider
participants did little to compliment existing intelligence estimates. He stated, “rather
than including a diversity of views ... the Strategic Objectives Panel [the outsider
participants] was composed entirely of individuals who made careers of viewing the
Soviet menace with alarm."
34
His representation of the episode indicated that the
95
presumptions behind the outsider analysts claims yielded a decidedly skewed
interpretation of the intelligence data.
The parallels between Team B and Wolfowitz’s later policy arguments reveal
an emphasis on deduction that diminishes the value of evidence in threat assessment.
The Team B report charged that the U.S. intelligence community had “misperceived
the motivations behind Soviet Strategic programs and thereby tended consistently to
underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat.”
35
Gordon Mitchell and
Robert Newman argue that Team-B’s methodology itself constituted a significant
shift in analytical logic. Members of Team B offered conclusions based on Soviet
intentions, rather than measurements of material capabilities. By arguing about
Soviet motives, the Team B analysts could extrapolate significant increases in Soviet
military technology and spending. Their arguments echoed previous NSC-68
alarmist rhetoric designed to “strike a chord of terror” to underscore the existence of
potential Soviet threats.
36
Though the Team B assessment was ostensibly conceived
as a means to reevaluate U.S. intelligence, the exercise revealed itself to be, in the
words of George H.W. Bush, “manipulation for purposes other than estimative
accuracy.”
37

The actual intelligence analysis produced by the Team B exercise was soon
after “disproved on the ground”– yet it had succeeded in shifting public discourse
over the Soviet threat and raised the profile of its participants, many of whom would
go on to assume important positions with the Reagan administration.
38
The Team B
episode was an example of dissensus; opening the door for public criticism of
96
contemporary policy reasoning like détente.
39
By reinvigorating a public sense of
crisis, Team B paved the way for the revitalization of Cold War lobbying groups like
the Committee on the Present Danger, the American Security Council,
40
and the
Coalition of Peace Through Strength,
41
all of whom argued for an aggressive defense
posture and were strongly critical of President Carter’s foreign policy. Their efforts
were instrumental in establishing the dominant discourse of the Reagan
administration. Wolfowitz, following the success of the Team B exercise, would
soon after argue that a more assertive policy in the Middle East was necessary to
secure the United States.
Signs of crisis: the Limited Contingency Study and the 1992 Defense
Planning Guidance

After his involvement with Team B, Wolfowitz worked as the U.S Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Regional Affairs for the Carter administration. In
June of 1979, he commissioned a report outlining threats posed to Middle East oil
fields. The report was titled the Limited Contingency Study and expressed a belief
that unstable regimes like Iraq could disrupt energy resources in the Middle East.
42

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study also mirrored concerns voiced by Wohlstetter,
who had argued that the Middle East posed the combined danger of political
instability with the prospect of nuclear proliferation.
43

Wolfowitz concluded in the report that Iraq posed the most important threat
to the power-balance of the region, particularly to the U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s
growth as a military power was found to be “a worrisome development because of
97
Iraq’s radical Arab-stance, its anti-Western attitudes, its dependence on Soviet
arms sales, and its willingness to foment trouble in other local nations.”
44
Soviet
expert and State Department official Dennis Ross, who had contributed, questioned
Wolfowitz’s analysis of Iraq at the time. He noted that no one believed Iraq “posed a
serious or imminent threat to the Saudis.”
45
Wolfowitz allegedly responded by
stating that, “When you look at contingencies, you don’t focus only on the likelihood
of the contingency but also on the severity of its consequences.”
46
Ross later
observed that Wolfowitz was not concerned so much with the actual threat, but in the
worst possible consequences.
47
In this instance, Wolfowitz demonstrated a logic that
emphasized the potentiality of threat as crucial to policy recommendation.
The report was significant for two reasons. First, it marked the beginning of
Wolfowitz’s continued interest in Iraq. Second, it signaled future neo-conservative
arguments pertaining to Iraq involving the necessity of military intervention. The
report concluded that “we should manifest our capabilities and commitments to
balance Iraq’s power – and they may require an increased visibility for U.S.
power.”
48
Sounding a similar note, Wohlstetter argued a few months after the
report’s release that that the dangers of states gaining access to weapons should be
matched by a U.S. willingness to take action: "How do we cope with instabilities in
countries important to us?... Are we saying we will use force only after an
unambiguous massive Soviet attack?"
49
The Limited Contingency Study, however,
had little immediate impact on US foreign policy. Nevertheless the study
demonstrated an early exemplar of his argument logic regarding the Middle East, and
98
showed how the logical assumptions behind his arguments necessitated a military-
based policy prescription. It signaled the forms of public argument that he would
later use to argue for a second war against Iraq.
Twelve years after the publication of the Limited Contingency Study,
Wolfowitz was again involved in a Middle East scenario. At the time, he was serving
as the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the administration of George H.W.
Bush. The position afforded him the opportunity to speak publicly about the war and
explain Bush’s decision not to overthrow Baghdad in 1991. Wolfowitz stated in an
interview on public television that the United States would not tolerate dealing with
Saddam Hussein, and implied that the dictator would not last in the face of sanctions
and U.S. support of opposition groups within Iraq:
Well, in fact, we have a problem with the idea of Saddam Hussein remaining
as the head of the Iraqi government. It's difficult for us to see ourselves or
any other country having normal relations with a country that's headed by a
man like that. Obviously, we'd like to see him go, so I can't deny that. I'm not
sure that every day he's more firmly ensconced. I don't think his long-term
prospects are terribly good.. It's the Iraqis who are -- this Iraqi regime that has
a problem. And I don't think it's ever going to come unstuck from that
problem until there's not only a change of leadership, but basically a change
of policy.
50

The Bush administration at the time opted to forego significant efforts to remove
Hussein from power. During the war, Wolfowitz and then Secretary of Defense
Richard Cheney had aggressively promoted a secret plan devised by Assistant
Secretary of Defense Henry Rowen known as “Operation Scorpion” to use the U.S.
military to seize the southern desert region of Iraq. The plan would have extended
the war to the outskirts of Baghdad, targeted the remaining concealed SCUD missile
99
sites, and likely removed Hussein from power.
51
The plan was never implemented,
and Wolfowitz was left to explain that the United States did not have sufficient
resources to pursue a total overthrow of the Iraqi regime.
52

Ultimately, the decision not to overthrow Saddam Hussein proved a bitter
disappointment to foreign policy thinkers like Wolfowitz, who had joined with a
growing group of so-called “neo-conservative” policy pundits arguing for the
removal of Saddam Hussein.
53
The decision not to provide direct assistance to Iraqi
opposition groups after the ceasefire was declared in February of 1991, and was
described in a remark allegedly attributed to Wolfowitz as “idly watching a
mugging.”
54
As the neo-conservative Weekly Standard editor William Kristol
explained in an interview on PBS’s Frontline, the Under Secretary was confounded
by the resolution of the conflict:
The [key moment] in 1991 was not the decision to stop the war after
100 hours. I think that was defensible, and perhaps reasonable. It was
the decision a couple of weeks later not to aid the rebels who had
risen up against Saddam, and whom we had encouraged to rise up.
That was a key moment. I know that Paul Wolfowitz was very
unhappy at that moment, and had argued that we should intervene...
55

Kristol’s account revealed an ideological divide within the first Bush
administration. The withdrawal of U.S. military support for regime change in
Iraq was a dangerous diversion from Wolfowitz’s ideal policy objective in
the region. His views contrasted with the dominant perspective of the
administration.
100
Kristol told Frontline that the Under Secretary simply did not share the
cautious realism of President Bush and his advisor, Brent Scowcroft. This was not
altogether surprising given their previous dealings. Bush had directed the CIA during
the Team B exercise and was critical of its alarmist arguments. The Under Secretary,
however, was undeterred from arguing that Iraq remained a threat that required
further intervention. In November of 1991, he warned of the looming threat posed by
Iraq in a speech at the American Bar Association. He argued that Saddam Hussein’s
control over strategic resources represented a continued concern because it enabled
Saddam to build up an arsenal with relative ease:
Just with a fraction of them [resources], we've seen what Saddam
Hussein was able to do with his nuclear program. And he has
enormous control over the world as a whole because of the lock on
the world economy. I think, unfortunately, the Persian Gulf is one of
those parts of the world where Murphy's Law is guaranteed to apply,
where anything that can go wrong probably will.
56

Wolfowitz argued that the inevitability of threat coming from the region should be
cause for worry amongst U.S defense policy-makers. He used the case of Iraq to
underscore his concern over increasing calls to draw down U.S. military spending at
the end of the Cold War: “What I fear is that we may throw away that strategic asset
that's represented by the quality of our officer corps and the quality of our enlisted
people, and maybe by 1999, a future Saddam Hussein will find that in fact the time is
much better.”
57
Despite the fact that the United States had just successfully
prosecuted a large military campaign, he reiterated a rhetoric describing the U.S. as
still on the brink of crisis.
101
Like Wohlstetter, Wolfowitz was concerned here with the consequences
of being unprepared for future threats. The analyst shielded himself from the need to
provide evidence of an imminent threat, however, by couching his arguments in
speculation about the long term. He asserted that action was necessary today to face
down the threats of the future. “We're talking not about the security of the Persian
Gulf today or tomorrow. We're talking about the end of this decade, because the
decisions we make about military forces today are going to decide what we have at
the end of this decade.”
58
By arguing about consequences, the details of evidence are
minimized. Wolfowitz could freely speculate on a range of threats that pushed the
U.S. towards the brink of crisis based on a few simple deductions about how
international actors could threaten U.S. security. Such thinking would soon gain
public notoriety in his controversial Defense Planning Guidance of 1992.
The Defense Planning Guidance (henceforth DSG) of 1992 was a classified
document produced by Wolfowitz’s team of civilian analysts at the Department of
Defense. It provided, in many respects, the basic arguments that would come to
define the foreign policies of the second Bush administration after 2001. These
arguments outlined a basic set of strategies to ensure United States primacy in the
wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution.
59
Under normal circumstances, the DSG was
a biennial document produced to describe the general strategic concerns of the
United States armed forces. The 1992 DSG, however, was the first of such
documents produced after the fall of the Soviet Union.
60
It was leaked to the press in
draft form prior to completion in 1992 and provoked a considerable amount of public
102
criticism. The policy study argued that the United States would need to forestall
future competition by makings sure that no future competitors would arise. The
document draft was interpreted to imply that the United States should interfere in the
development of its allies, Germany and Japan. Both of these countries were
experiencing substantial economic growth in comparison to the United States, amidst
some concern that the United States was in relative economic decline. The
document’s implication that strategic action might be taken against allies sparked
considerable agitation in the international press, and a revised version was quietly
released without any suggestion of “keeping the allies down.”
61

Despite the relatively short-lived status controversy, the DSG articulated a
significant rhetorical precursor to the ideological positions argued by Wolfowitz
after 2001 by providing a set of presumptions that codified the omnipresence of
threat. The document advocated the US maintain “unmatchable military strength.”
62

Such strength enabled the United States to “preclude threats,” and to act
“independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.”
63
The language of
the original document quoted here shows a relatively unambiguous argument for
securing U.S. dominance.
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This
is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense
strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power
from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated
control, be sufficient to generate global power.
64

The document offers a revealing summation of his (and by extension Wolhstetter’s)
disregard for the realist, power-balancing discourses of previous Cold War
103
presidential administrations. In the place of that Cold War policy logic, the
policy paper outlines a new purpose for U.S. power: “… The U.S must show the
leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of
convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue
a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
65
The ideal objective
for U.S. strategic policy is to remove incentives for competition; literally removing
the very idea that confrontation with the United States was possible: “…We must
maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role."
66
The DSG advocated an aggressive form of
deterrence; a totalizing mobilization to discourage even an imagined threat.
The DSG produced by Wolfowitz’s office detailed a policy rhetoric that
could be traced back to the ideological precepts of the Team B reports of 1976 and
the Limited Contingency Assessment of 1979. George Packer, in his historical
account of the Iraq war’s planning stages, noted the DPG as part of a legacy of
foreign policy ideas:
The DPG was very much a continuation of the neoconservative
thinking that spawned the Committee on the Present Danger. The
skies were always ominous, threats always loomed on the horizon…
to officials like Wolfowitz, it was always 1979. And what were the
new threats? They were everyone and everywhere. And what was the
remedy? American power, everywhere…
67

The DPG was an argument template for foreign policy; a heuristic for imagining the
foreign policy environment that identified emergent threats and provided ready
104
policy prescriptions. Perhaps more importantly, it sought to impose a kind of
direction to the uncertainty of the post-Cold War foreign policy.
Wolfowitz later clarified that the document was intended to sustain support
for the presence of U.S. troops in Europe – rather than argue directly for global
dominance. He offered that the strategy filled a vacuum in strategic thinking left in
the wake of the Cold war. “It’s hard to imagine how uncertain the world looked after
the end of the Cold War.”
68
The history of Wolfowitz’s foreign policy arguments
show a consistent strategy of foregrounding threats and providing normative policy
prescriptions to address such threats. At a basic level, this strategy is understandable
given that his job was to advise and create security policy. Yet what distinguished his
arguments was the consistency behind the assessments and prescriptions he provided.
Such consistency suggests an ideological, dogmatic tendency. His policies, in other
words, reflected a sealed, self-referential discourse – a set of related ideas and terms
through which to imagine a rational course for foreign policy. Wolfowitz’s discourse
formation imposed a reinvention of what Kane described as the Cold War’s
“commanding ideas,” the omnipresence of threat and the need for mobilization that
justified the Cold War. Only after the increasingly ambiguous policies of the Clinton
administration would such a formation become an increasingly compelling vision to
the larger foreign policy establishment.
The following sections examine how such discourse was re-articulated by
Wolfowitz a decade later in two revealing episodes of argument and the media
coverage the Deputy Secretary received around the time of each address. The first
105
speech comes three months prior to the attacks of 9/11, yet evinces a state of
imminent threat seemingly more fitting to the period after the attack. The subsequent
speech is a congressional testimony given a month after 9/11, which reveals the
continuity of his policy arguments despite a dramatically changed foreign policy
context. The following sections begin with an analysis of a speech given at West
Point in June of 2001.
The 2001 West Point address
On June 2, 2001 Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz gave an address at
the commencement ceremony of the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Wolfowitz’s address at the time was a routine outing for an administration official,
yet in retrospect it presented a revealing summation of a rhetorical position. This
section provides an in-depth analysis of the speech and its contributions to the
administration’s rhetorical movement. The section begins with a review of the
context surrounding the address, then moves to analyze the text of the speech itself.
Prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had yet to establish an obvious neo-
conservative foreign policy framework. Its still-undefined foreign policy was tested
in April 2001, when a U.S. surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet. The
24 members of the U.S. plane were forced to land in Chinese territory, while the
fighter pilot was presumed dead. The ensuing diplomatic standoff resulted in the
United States issuing a formal apology to the Chinese government, much to the
dismay of neo-conservative commentators.
69
Their frustration with the Bush
administration was further exacerbated when the Defense Department issued its
106
proposed budget increases on April 12. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2002
featured a 3 billion dollar reduction in spending on new weapons technology,
contrary to the reforms promised by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld early in the year.
70

As the administration seemed to struggle to define its positions on national security
and foreign policy, foreign pressures on the administration continued to mount.
On April 11, Israel launched its first armed incursion into Gaza since
September of 2000, putting the Middle East peace process in further jeopardy.
71
On
April 30, the State Department released a report indicating that terrorist attacks had
increased worldwide by 8%; with the number of deaths resulting from terrorism
doubling since 1999.
72
Shortly thereafter, the United States was denied a seat on the
United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights.
73
These events did not
independently instigate a change in U.S. foreign policy, though they provoked more
vocal expressions of concern by neo-conservatives such as Wolfowitz within the
administration. By May of 2001, the administration began to take on a more
pronounced neo-conservative policy stance. The earliest expression of this change
came in the administration’s attitude towards multilateral regimes and institutions,
especially with its decision to discard the 1972 ABM treaty (the same treaty that
Wolfowitz had worked to prevent in 1969). On May 1, 2001, President Bush
announced that the U.S. would begin research and deployment programs for national
ballistic missile defense technologies.
74
Bush argued that the ABM treaty proscribing
such technology was a relic of the “adversarial legacy of the Cold War,” and pressed
for international reconsideration of the treaty.
75
Bush’s speech sparked controversy
107
both domestically and abroad, and advisors such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
moved to support the new policy position.
76
By June, the Deputy Secretary of
Defense became embroiled in the public debate over whether or not to pursue the
abrogation of the ABM Treaty.
77
The decision to dissolve the treaty appeared as
much a symbolic move as a strategic one, signaling a shift in policy emphasis
towards unilateralist threat prevention.
Other signs emerged that a neo-conservative discourse increasingly
influenced the administration’s policy appeared in June and July, when the
administration unexpectedly announced a budget amendment to its previous defense
budget proposal. The new proposal added $18.4 billion, with over 3.6 to new
weapons systems.
78
The aggressive campaign to promote ballistic missile defense
and the abrupt to capitulation to neo-conservative critics of defense spending were
the backdrop to the Deputy Secretary’s speech on June 2.
Wolfowitz’s speech was relatively brief, consisting of three sections and
totaling only about 2500 words. The first section featured a perfunctory recognition
of the venue, including recognition of the graduates’ accomplishments and other
honored participants in the ceremony. The second and third sections, however,
unfolded the significance of the terms “surprise” and “courage” as defining elements
of service to national security. These sections were couched in historical anecdotes
drawn from key moments in the Second World War. They conveyed through analogy
the timeless and pervasive nature of threat and an ideal form of character for those
108
responsible for national security. In unveiling these analogies, he laid the
discursive groundwork for the audience to share in his particular policy imagination.
Many of the arguments and subject matter introduced in the speech alluded to
the justificatory reasoning behind the Bush administration’s foreign and security
policy proposals at the time. The speech did not directly address the issue of missile
defense, but did present in general terms the policy presumptions what would make
missile defense a seemingly legitimate departure from the years of abiding by an
international treaty. The speech couched in more general terms a policy logic derived
from an ideologically charged perception of the state of strategic affairs.
The Deputy Secretary’s speech detailed a way of perceiving the international
scene via the exhortation of two themes: “surprise” and “courage.” These themes
served two rhetorical functions in support Wolfowitz’s larger campaign to change
the discourse of U.S. foreign policy. “Surprise” depicted a scene that is fraught with
the possibility of danger while “courage” emboldened policy actors to act decisively.
Linked together, these two terms play upon the enthymemes of crisis. Both Denise
Bostdorff and Amos Kiewe argue that invoking crisis allows greater freedom for a
president to act upon foreign policy and national security concerns.
79
For Wolfowitz,
however, crisis served a more fundamental role in his foreign policy arguments
beyond the articulation of an immediate crisis. Wolfowitz’s holistic discourse
assembles a world view that presupposes crisis as the defining scene for foreign
109
policy.
∗
Such a discourse formation becomes the generative material from which
policies can be imagined and articulated. His commencement address articulates this
discourse formation in the two related “crisis” themes of surprise and courage.
The first substantive elements of the speech introduce a thematic emphasis
reiterating the neo-conservative frame of uncertainty as defining the global
environment.
80
According to the Deputy Secretary’s arguments, the uncertainty of
the post-Cold War world merits renewed attention to the presence of potentially
unforeseen threats. He suggests that “surprise” is the most dangerous consequence of
an uncertain world. The 60
th
anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor is offered as
a warning to stewards of national security: “Interestingly, that ‘surprise attack’ was
preceded by an astonishing number of unheeded warnings and missed signals.”
81
He
draws attention here to the historical significance of being unprepared, implying that
a responsible policy cannot wait on complete information.
The Pearl Harbor analogy conveys the consequences of not “seeing” potential
threats – as if policy-makers were not equipped with the necessary strategic
conceptions to assess the threats arrayed against the U.S. The analogy indicts policy-
makers as not recognizing the international “scene” correctly. His own assessment of
international scene suggests that the wise leader strives to anticipate threat. He

∗
The idea of “world view” has been investigated along several different lines. Yaacov Vertzberger’s
“The World in their Minds” explains the power of discourse as a constraint on cognition. Others, such
as Jutta Weldes and Roxanne Doty, offer that discourse defines the culture of foreign policy, and thus
what is considered normal or logical. Earlier studies, such as the influence of “groupthink” capture the
inertial power of ideas in foreign policy as an organizational phenomenon.
110
argues that a failure to imagine the possibility of a threat is a real danger for
national security, and often the result of a narrowly defined focus for strategic
analysts:
Yet military history is full of surprises, even if few are as dramatic or as
memorable as Pearl Harbor. Surprise happens so often that it’s surprising that
we’re still surprised by it. Very few of these surprises are the product of
simple blindness or simple stupidity. Almost always there have been
warnings and signals that have been missed--sometimes because there were
just too many warnings to pick the right one out, sometimes because of what
one scholar of Pearl Harbor called "a poverty of expectations"—a routine
obsession with a few familiar dangers.
82

Wolfowitz is attempting here to normalize an attitude of sustained suspicion; he is
suggesting that a responsible foreign policy stance should be one of wariness and
open-mindedness to new threats. The scenic milieu of crisis-as-transition is
articulated here to position decisive leadership as crucial. As crisis is perpetually
entrenched in the scenic calculus of his worldview, decisive leadership is always
required.
The theme of surprise also serves as a subtle indictment of the managerial,
disinterested foreign policy discourse of realism that had dominated foreign policy
thinking throughout much of the later Cold War. His critique reflects the neo-
conservative reaction to the realist “bureaucratization of the imagination” that
thinkers like Wolfowitz found to so troublesome for national security. Much like
William Kristol and Robert Kagan’s canonical neo-conservative tract, “Toward a
Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” cautioned in 1996, he argues that U.S. national
security was surviving on a legacy of assertive preparedness. Any retreat to cautious
111
realism detracts from U.S. military predominance.
83
His rhetoric on surprise
provides a prelude to future disagreements between policy realists and the resurgent
neo-conservatives later during the lead-up to the Iraq war.
84
Such debates became
more openly public in 2002, when Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger went
to the media to critique the administration’s idealized justifications for war in Iraq.
85

Wolfowitz’s speech, in particular, highlights a significant divergence between the
premises of realist and neo-conservative foreign policy discourse.
A key difference between the two visions of policy revolves around the
assumption that the “scene” of international relations can be transformed through the
judicious application of U.S. power. A more traditional realist perspective would
charge foreign policy makers with restraining the ambitions of other states through
power balancing.
86
His arguments extend to replacing the actors within the
international scene. To imagine less reflected a deficiency in the expectations of
foreign policy. He argued that “[O]ur chances of realizing those hopes [of peace and
democratic expansion] will be greater if we use the benefit of hindsight to replace a
poverty of expectations with an anticipation of the unfamiliar and the unlikely.”
87

This rhetoric builds upon the transformative fervor that Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld had brought to the Pentagon with his drive to change the force structure of
the armed forces in 2001. It implies that significant changes to the norms of security
policy were justified under the supposition that new and unimagined threats were
ever-present and always emerging to make previous preparations outmoded. As with
the Limited Contingency report of 1977, Wolfowitz argues that the consequences of
112
being wrong outweigh any argument against transforming policy to meet such a
potential threat.
To forestall any threat that may threaten the United States, the Deputy
Secretary argues that recognizing the environment of potential global threat should
be met in kind with the “courage” to secure the United States abroad. He
acknowledges that such action was often controversial and resource intensive, but
was demanded of those charged with securing the nation. To underscore the
importance of decisive action, the Deputy Secretary defers to the historical examples
of General Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. His description of courage
strikes a chord similar to President Bush’s stated disregard for public influence in
foreign policy, and reaffirms the persona of the statesman in directing policy.
88
For
Wolfowitz, the courage to act is articulated as a reflection of moral certitude within
the policymaker:
Courage comes in many forms. Sometimes even more demanding
than the physical courage to face danger is the moral courage to do
what’s right: doing your job the way it’s supposed to be done, even if
others advocate the easy way; choosing the harder right over the
easier wrong, even if you have to take a hit for speaking up for what
you think is true.

The Deputy Secretary argues here that the national security leadership may be
beyond the realm of the deliberative – and that the true leader requires a mix of
decisiveness and moral conviction. The Eisenhower and MacArthur examples
conflate these two values, perhaps in anticipation of the criticism the Bush
administration would receive as the administration built up its rhetorical campaign
113
for war against Iraq. Here his rhetoric imagines an executive tasked with making
the difficult decisions in security policy.
Moral courage means taking responsibility for the decisions you
make, not shifting blame to others if something goes wrong. It’s
standing alone—when your only company is the knowledge that you
did your best; your only comfort that you answered MacArthur’s
higher call.
89

This analogy conveys the moral dimension of the Deputy Secretary’s views on
foreign policy leadership, which still reflects the influence of Wolhstetter. Perhaps
the most prescient aspect of Wolfowitz’s speech, however, is his recitation of
Eisenhower’s diary prior to the D-Day invasion. He shows how Eisenhower’s words,
drafted before the launch of the largest military operation in US history, demonstrate
that conviction was the consolation for leadership. These words clearly anticipate the
future rhetorical framing of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq:
"My decision to attack at this time," he wrote, "was based upon the
best information available," he wrote. "The troops, the airmen and the
Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame
or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." Ike was a great hero,
a man of great moral courage with the willingness to shoulder
responsibility that is the mark of a great leader.
90

The clustering of terms related to action and moral conviction are collapsed together
in his invocation of Eisenhower’s message to the troops: "You are about to embark
on a great crusade," he told them. "The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes
and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you." With the use of
the term “crusade,” Wolfowitz again conflates foreign policy with a moral standard
of responsible stewardship.
114
The themes of surprise and courage argued together form a kind of self-
referential policy logic. The promotion of crisis conjures the sense that some policy
action is needed to forestall the dangers looming in the status quo. The policy action
that Wolfowitz implies is a re-tooling of the contemporary range of policy thinking
(what he indirectly called the “poverty of expectations”). To not act would suggest
the U.S. suffer another disastrous surprise. Attaching “courage” to crisis elevates the
ethos of foreign policy decision makers, providing a moral injunction to address
threat. The theme of courage serves to both embolden those leaders who would
propose policy changes, and discourage deliberation as antagonistic to the duties of
responsible leadership (i.e, courage signifies the capacity to act in the face of public
criticism). These two themes fill out a basic defense of the neo-conservative
rhetorical movement, and reflect the principal strategies of Wolfowitz’s own
rhetorical campaign during the early months of the Bush administration. He would
continue to articulate these notions in repeated media appearances both before and
after the events of 9/11.
Imagining “rogue states” in Wolfowitz’s media argument
Soon after the commencement, the Deputy Secretary articulated a new round
of arguments on the necessity of a ballistic missile defense system, starting with
testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 12, 2001.
91
This
period served as a proving ground for the kinds of arguments that would later
animate his rhetoric after 9/11 of expanding the Global War on Terror from
Afghanistan to Iraq. The Ballistic Missile campaign also foreshadowed the role that
115
the media would play as a surrogate to the neo-conservative rhetorical movement
after 9/11. The campaign was not only supported by the Deputy Secretary, but also
by like-minded commentary appearances leveraging a largely uncritical series of
news platforms.
92
Frequent media coverage of a cadre of neo-conservative speakers,
such as Richard Perle and William Kristol, offered this rhetorical movement a
convenient bully-pulpit. As some critics of neo-conservative advocacy observed, the
coordinated efforts of Fox News to amplify the perspective of editors, foreign policy
“experts,” sympathetic academics and foreign policy government alumni provided a
distinctively one-sided forum of foreign policy discourse and reasoning.
93

The public ascendance of figures like Wolfowitz who were central to this
discourse within the policy-making apparatus amounted to an effective triangulation
of advocacy – supplying a steady, coherent stream of reasoning to both the mass
audience and to the policy elite. The gains made by this foreign policy movement
cannot be measured simply by exposure, but can be gauged by the kinds of framing
that media aired, effectively propagating the reasoning behind the rhetorical
movement.
The Deputy Secretary’s media presence featured him arguing for the
necessity of national ballistic missile defense technology as crucial to the long-term
security of the country. In a July 13
th
2001 interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, he
claims that “the intermediate-range missile threat is here now, and the long-range
threat to American cities is just over the horizon, a matter of years, not decades,
away. And our people and our territory are defenseless. Why? The answer to that
116
last question has four letters: A, B, M, T-- the ABM Treaty.”
94
The treaty itself
was an impediment to the security of the United States. Such dire warnings were
reinforced in the Washington Post’s arguments against scaling back defense
spending:
It is "reckless to press our luck or gamble with our children's future" by
spending only 3 percent of America's gross national product on defense.
Bush's proposed defense budget of $ 329 billion puts defense spending at 3
percent. As Republicans liked to point out during the Clinton years, it hasn't
been that low since Pearl Harbor.
95

The principal concern for neo-conservatives at the time was cutbacks in military
spending.
96
For Wolfowitz to argue the possibility of threat, however, he required
some sort of evidence to substantiate the scene-building rhetoric of crisis. The ABM
debate offered the opportunity to use the media to introduce some specifics about
where such threats would emerge. Predictably, Wolfowitz’s arguments drew upon
naming potential antagonists like Iraq, already established in the repertoire of neo-
conservative foreign policy discourse.
In the following Washington Post excerpt, Wolfowitz warns about the
potential dangers presented by an armed Iraq. He offers the first Gulf War as an
instructive anecdote illustrating the dangers of a “rogue state” employed with
ballistic missile weaponry:
Imagine . . . a rogue state with a vastly inferior military but armed with
ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction commits an act of
aggression against a neighboring country. As President Bush sends forces
into the theater to respond, the country's genocidal dictator threatens our
allies and deployed forces with a ballistic missile attack. Almost without
warning, missiles rain down on our troops and pound into densely populated
residential neighborhoods of allied capitals. . . .
117
That scene is not science fiction. . . . It is a description of events that took
place 10 years ago during the Persian Gulf War. . .
97

Rather than illustrate the likelihood of an attack, this narrative replays the neo-
conservative tactic of focusing on the intentions of the threatening regime and the
consequences of an attack. Iraq is presented as a gathering danger, making the notion
of a ballistic missile defense a logical policy response. The necessity of such a policy
is argued in conjunction with a rejection of the status quo: where continuing the
current course of policy would likely lead to disaster.
The Deputy Secretary used the media to deflect criticism of his controversial
bid for missile defense through an appeal to the logic of crisis. His rhetoric assailed
the dangers implicit in the status quo, represented as the outmoded 1972 ABM treaty,
to reject accusations that the United States does not face an imminent threat from a
ballistic missile attack. He the shifts his criticism of the treaty from the specifics of
threat toward questionings the logic of neglecting to invest in a defense technology.
In this July 13, 2001 interview on the Fox News Network with Tony Snow,
Wolfowitz suggests that to not do something to defend the United States, regardless
of actual threat, would be “crazy”:
SNOW: There's another argument critics make, which is that if you start
doing an assessment of threat, and they say that this has been done at the
Pentagon, you start looking down the list, people right now are more worried
about terrorist acts, you know, bombs in suitcases and the like, than they are
about a ballistic missile threat, and that therefore we ought to be allocating
more money to the terrorist problem and maybe slow down the development
of missile defense.
WOLFOWITZ: Look, I'm worried about the terrorist threat, too. And I think
we should do everything we reasonably can. We don't have a treaty
preventing us from defending us the terrorist threat. It's crazy to have a treaty
118
that prevents us from defending Americans.
WOLFOWITZ: Tony, the important point is the technology isn't ripe for 10
years or, actually, for 30 years. We have deprived ourselves from pursuing
the most promising technological possibilities because they would violate the
ABM treaty. We've got to develop those technologies. And when we see
something that works, then we will come to Congress for money to deploy
it.
98

Wolfowitz returns here to the importance of consequence as a justification that
superseded any other deliberative standard for reaching a policy conclusion. The
Deputy Secretary articulates the dangers of the status quo in order to reaffirm that
not act to address threat would be disastrous. In world imagined to contain threats
both in the near and distant future, to not invest in a defense technology becomes
inconceivable.
On July 24, 2001 Ted Koppel confronted Wolfowitz on ABC’s Nightline
about the relative importance of ballistic missile threats. The Deputy Secretary
responded by dismissing Koppel’s query on whether rogue states outweighed the
growing threat posed by terrorism and reiterated the importance of “consequence.”
His arguments suggest that because the future is inherently uncertain, strategic policy
must be adapted:
Ted, we're gazing into a very fuzzy crystal ball when you make those
predictions. Any estimate of a war in Korea shows that the North Korean
ballistic missile threat would take tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of
thousands of casualties just in the peninsula alone. And the North Koreans
are working on longer and longer-range ballistic missiles. We need to work
against both those threats…We have zero capability to defend against
ballistic missiles.
99

Wolfowitz concludes the interview with a subtle dismissal of “deterrence” as a
foreign policy tool. This challenge to the foreign policy conventional wisdom is
119
couched within a counter-factual argument. He does not dismiss deterrence
wholesale, but offers that the strategy should be complimented with a technological
capability that can address threat and he invited the audience to imagine a possible
future:
No one is arguing to give up deterrence. Deterrence is something we need to
have. But you need more than deterrence if it's available. I mean, just imagine
how that Gulf War crisis would have proceeded if Saddam Hussein had long-
range missiles capable of targeting the capitals of our allies in Europe or in
Asia. Or suppose he'd had long-range missiles capable of targeting the United
States. And deterrence didn't get him to stop using his ballistic missiles. It
may be the reason why he didn't put chemical warheads on the end of
them.
100

The notion of “imagining” threats serves here as a kind of justification unto itself. It
demonstrated how a neo-conservative’s rhetorical campaign rests on a sense of crisis
nurtured by speculative reasoning. At the same time, his dismissal of the “status quo”
policy thinking defended the arguments of the movement by drawing attention back
to imagined threats. Wolfowitz’s arguments by supposition allow him the freedom to
create urgency based on the extrapolation of a few key presumptions. By July of
2001, the logic that had justified missile defense began to show its utility for other
policy objectives on the neo-conservative agenda.
In a CNN interview on July 28, 2001 ostensibly on the subject of missile
defense, Wolfowitz revealed Iraq and the regime of Saddam Hussein to be the most
compelling case for investment in missile defense programs.
101
While
acknowledging North Korea as a potential threat, he provides an unprompted
evaluation of Saddam Hussein as a strategic concern for the U.S. After the interview
120
discussion settles on strategic priorities for the United States, when he interjects
the threat posed by Iraq as critical: “I don't think we can bow out. This man is a
menace. He's not just interested in American planes. That's bad enough. He's
interested in overthrowing his neighbors. He's interested in acquiring weapons of
mass destruction.”
102
Saddam Hussein stands in here as a symbol for the
unpredictable threat described by the Deputy Secretary. Hussein’s enduring regime
merits the possibility that future threats to the United States loom on the horizon.
Following the framework established in his commencement address, the presence of
“villains” such as Hussein fueled the potential of surprise and necessitated the policy
courage that animated Wolfowitz’s policy arguments.
Taken together, Wolfowitz’s commencement speech and his media
appearances in the months that followed elaborated a discourse that reinforced a
particular neo-conservative policy imagination. By arguing the prevalence of
surprise, he affirmed policies that proactively address threats – either through
investment in military hardware or taking measures to remove threats abroad.
Meanwhile, his appeals to courage interpellated both audience and policy-makers as
stewards of security – whose primary moral responsibility was to recognize threat
and act decisively. The crucial distinction of “courage” mandated action rather than
debate. Saddam Hussein, in particular, was offered as the public face behind the
persistent threat endemic to the rhetoric of crisis. The next section illustrates how
this policy rhetoric anticipated, then seized upon the post-9/11 policy environment.
121
Wolfowitz’s arguments elaborate the crisis of 9/11 as grounds for arguments for
war against Iraq.
The QDR and the aftermath of 9/11
On October 4
th
, 2001, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz went before the U.S.
Congress to detail the contents of the sixty-five page Quadrennial Defense Review
(or QDR). The Deputy Secretary’s speech on the QDR was entitled “Building a
military for the 21
st
century” and was structured as a series of “lessons” mandating
both strategic and organizational shifts in managing the nation’s defense. The speech
was over 1750 words in length and consisted of two substantive sections – an
explication of the “new security environment” and an outline of the new strategic
objectives derived from the quadrennial defense review. The speech was the first
official statement of strategic re-alignment from the Defense Department that
incorporated the events of September 11 into logic of U.S. defense strategy.
The actual QDR report was released on September 30, 2001 and was required
by federal statute. Both Secretary Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were involved in the
creation of the document as a blueprint for future defense strategies, and the Deputy
Secretary acknowledged that the majority of the report’s recommendations were
completed well in advance of 9/11.
103
The document was updated after 9/11 to re-
emphasize the capacity of the military to confront “asymmetrical threats” such as
international terrorism, and to promote the ability of the United States military to
defend the homeland through “forward deterrence.”
104
According to a senior defense
official, “[t]he report was animated in large measure by the notion that, while it is
122
possible for us to imagine how we might be confronted with danger in the future,
it was not always clear whence it would come or in what manner the threats would
materialize.”
105
The report provided a strategy template that was less focused on
specific threats, but on how to respond to anticipated threats.
The Deputy Secretary’s explanation of the report suggests that his previous
crisis-laden rhetoric on “surprise” and “courage” had found a receptive context for
elaboration after 9/11. The “lessons” described in his speech reference his earlier
arguments in June about how the U.S. military should adapt to contemporary times
of uncertainty and risk. The Deputy Secretary aimed to remind his audience of
legislators that strategic assumptions could become outdated, leaving an ostensibly
prepared military open to the possibility of facing attacks such as those on 9/11. His
speech begins by elaborating how the current strategic environment has changed, and
through a series of threat scenarios pieces together a scenic description that invites
his preferred policy prescription for national defense. He begins by stating in blunt
terms that to ignore danger is to invite destruction for the United States:
But as we prepare for the battles ahead, we must recognize that these strikes
were not just an act of war—they were a window into our future: These
attacks were an assault on our people and our way of life; but they were also
a wake-up call—one that we ignore at our peril. …. Both of these missions
are critical and urgent: What is at stake in the first is our lives and our way of
life; what is at stake in the second is the lives and the futures of our children
and grandchildren.
106

Here, he establishes the urgency of crisis as the organizing trope of his speech. 9/11
is presented as a prophetic indicator of future conflict that should be heeded by those
123
responsible for national defense. As with previous Cold War rhetoric, the
definition of security strategy is portrayed as essential to the survival of the nation
itself.
Yet for Wolfowitz, the real lesson of 9/11 was not so much that civilization
was under attack, but that it validated his notion that surprise (and thus threat) is
pervasive in the international scene. The essence of surprise signifies that no policy
paradigm is necessarily enduring, and that change may be necessary. The following
statements reveal an attempt to argue that surprise demands a new kind of policy
action:
Lesson 1: Surprise is Back. Military history is full of surprises.
Indeed, surprise happens so often that it’s surprising we’re still
surprised by it. We ought to expect it…Yet during the Cold War, our
security environment had an appearance of predictability…Adapting
to surprise—adapting quickly and decisively—must therefore be a
condition of planning.,, The end of the Cold War did not restore our
previous invulnerability…This threat will only grow worse in the
coming years….They [U.S. enemies] may be less likely to be
discouraged by traditional deterrence. The threat of massive U.S.
retaliation certainly did not stop the September 11
th
assault on the
Pentagon or the World Trade Towers.
107

Though not explicit, he argues here that the status quo offered a dangerously
insufficient range of strategic thinking on how to address threat. The possibility of
terrible consequences, therefore, forces policy-makers to consider alternatives.
Having unmoored strategic wisdom from the stable policy paradigms of the Cold
War, Wolfowitz then described a new scene of crisis unburdened by any serious
evidence standards or precedent.

124
The Deputy Secretary proceeded to characterize terrorism as indicative of
the failures of states, not so much the outcome of ideological fantasy. States were
described as indispensable to the intentions of terrorist actors. This view refashioned
the objective for the nascent War on Terror to the removal of material sponsors of
terrorism. The depiction eludes the dubious prospect of eliminating the practice of
terrorism by providing a concrete target for American power, the most obvious target
at the time being Iraq.
Wolfowitz’s rhetoric again mirrors the logic of neo-conservative rhetoric. If
an international actor’s intention and capability were more important than threat
probability, strategy would dictate the removal of known threats with either the
intention or capability to threaten the United States. This logic implicated Iraq and
similar states as justifiable targets for strategic action. Terrorism is presented as just
one facet of a looming threat that stretched into the future:
That is why our challenge today is greater than winning the war against
terrorism. Today’s terrorist threat is a precursor of even greater threats to
come. It is no coincidence that the states harboring, financing and otherwise
assisting terrorists, are also in many cases the same states that are
aggressively working to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of
mass destruction, and the means to deliver them. We must defeat the terrorist
network responsible for the September 11
th
assaults. But just as importantly,
we need to prepare now for the emerging threats we will face in the next
decade and beyond.
108

The exigency that Wolfowitz refers to in this excerpt is a recognition that the
international scene is fraught with unforeseeable danger that does not play by the
rules of previous international relations. By building up the scene as danger-prone,
he carves out rhetorical “space” for articulating a policy rhetoric that fulfills the need
125
created by this omnipresent threat. The scene is crisis, because the outcome is
uncertain. The conclusion to crisis is revealed only in carrying out the policy changes
that he suggests.
The QDR testimony also provided Wolfowitz a platform to re-articulate the
fundamental policy logic of the 1992 DPG, despite the fact that the forum and the
report was not intended to be referendum on basic foreign policy presumptions. In
this passage, Wolfowitz revitalizes the notion that the United States should leverage
its power to forestall future danger.
We must dissuade potential adversaries from developing dangerous
capabilities in the first place—by developing and deploying U.S. capabilities
that reduce their incentives to compete…If we are to preserve our ability to
defend freedom in the 21
st
Century, we must prepare now for a world in
which future adversaries will strike at our people and our territory in
previously unimaginable ways.
109

What is perhaps most striking about the testimony is its ideological adherence to the
alarmist foreign policy rhetoric of the Cold War. Indeed, the events of 9/11 are
presented by Wolfowitz as a post-hoc proof of neo-conservative foreign policy
prescriptions, and used as an opportunity to forward the broader systemic claims
about reshaping the international scene with American power.
As an example, Wolfowitz uses the term “surprise” a total of 22 times
throughout the testimony, alluding to inability of previous strategic thinking to
anticipate and act upon nascent threats to the United States. To address these threats
he argues, “we must prepare now for a world in which future adversaries will strike
at our people and our territory in previously unimaginable ways.” [emphasis added]
126
The testimony thus represents a significant move towards challenging the
institutional discourse of foreign policy under the guise of departmental review;
supplanting a new set of ideas enshrined in the rhetorical movement of neo-
conservative policy imagination. As David Campbell and James Der Derian have
argued, the fundamental ideological assumptions of strategy are often encoded in
administrative policy discourse as common-sensical.
110
The Deputy Secretary’s
speech was indicative of a purposive re-encoding.
Wolfowitz QDR testimony was also a timely crystallization of the rhetoric he
was already propagating within the national media since his press conference on Sept
13, 2001. That press conference launched a series of arguments by the Deputy
Secretary linking the global terrorist organization Al-Qaeda to Iraq. National news
outlets quickly picked up his talking points after he intimated that Iraq might have
been involved in the attacks. At the Pentagon briefing on September 13, 2001 he
asserts that a likely response to the events of 9/11 was possible action against Iraq:
"It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but
removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor
terrorism,"
111
With this statement, he radically redefines the context of the attacks as
revealing of a scene of threat; a shadowy network of states and terrorists.
Nation-states, in particular, were prominent in this rhetoric and argued to be
essential to the actions of terrorists. He offered that any response to 9/11 would
therefore not be limited to some form of manhunt. "This is about more than just one
country."
112
Newspapers quickly reported Wolfowitz’s views that the nature of the
127
attacks of 9/11 required the assistance of a nation-state. The New York Times
reported two weeks after 9/11 that,“Mr. Wolfowitz is said to be wedded to the
position that Mr. bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network could not have carried out the
attack without Saddam Hussein's help, the officials said.”
113
With few alternatives to
provide counter argument, the media deferred to the framing provided by the high-
ranking presidential advisor.
Television media outlets also seemed to cooperate by promoting the
plausibility of Wolfowitz’s arguments. On September 13 he appeared for a lengthy
interview with Fox News anchor Brit Hume to discuss the implications of the 9/11
attacks. The interview was significant in its timing and for its substantive arguments.
The administration had yet to define the particulars of its response to the 9/11 attacks
and Wolfowitz was ready with an argument logic to define the situation. He seized
the opportunity to argue to the press on September 13
th
and then during the meeting
of Bush’s war cabinet on September 15 that the events of 9/11 provided a window of
time in which to deal with Saddam Hussein.
114
For Wolfowitz, this was an
opportunity for advocacy – to float the plausibility that the proper response to the
attacks would be to deal with long-term threats such as Iraq. During the Sept 13 Fox
News interview, Wolfowitz is asked by Brit Hume to explain the significance of the
attacks – and given is considerable latitude to characterize the immediate crisis.
Wolfowitz’s response to Hume presents the attacks as representative of a larger
threat to the United States:
128
We're dealing with something that is much more than just one individual
or one organization. And it's much more than just one quick, swift response.
We have got to root out the terrorist networks. And we have got to end the
support that they get from a number of states. We've got to treat it as a
campaign. It is going to be sustained. It's going to be difficult. But it is
absolutely crucial to preserving our way of life…. We know certain things
about who was involved in this. And there are other things we probably never
will know. And our policy has to aim at the fact not that we wait until we
have definitive evidence, but that we end these networks, we end the support
for these networks. And it has to be broad.
115

Wolfowitz words anticipate the rhetoric of the President in his September 20
th

address to the nation, by describing the immensity of the response as a campaign.
Surprise, again, is portrayed as a consequence of inaction. By suggesting that the
United States “not wait” to act on existing knowledge of threats, Wolfowitz uses the
scenic trappings of crisis to suggest a new foreign policy logic. When he argues that
the U.S. “probably will never know” the specifics, he effectively dismisses that task
of investigating the facts behind the 9/11 attacks, and pushes the urgency of
government action. Fox’s Hume did not criticize Wolfowitz’s assertions.
Rather than pose more incisive questions, Hume’s queries anticipate the
implications of a “campaign” against terror. Hume asks about the significance of
Osama bin Laden’s capture, while asserting the neo-conservative tacit enthymeme of
Saddam Hussein’s over-arching guilt. Hume participates in Wolfowitz’s framing of
the situation, by leading the interview directly from Osama Bin Laden to Saddam
Hussein:
HUME if Osama bin Laden were surrendered to us with his leading
associates tomorrow, how much difference would that make in terms the --
how much of the mission would then be accomplished?
WOLFOWITZ: I think only a tiny little piece of it.
129
HUME: Let me ask you this question, before this is all said and done, are
we likely not again to be face to face with Saddam Hussein?
WOLFOWITZ: He is one of the most active supporters of state terrorism. He
and the leader of Hamas, I believe, are the only serious leaders in the Middle
East that have applauded this act.
116

Wolfowitz uses the opportunity to thread the nature of Saddam Hussein’s potential
threat with the broader implications posed by the threat of global terrorism. After
establishing that combating terror involves a mobilization of the US’s military
potential and the targeting of state-sponsors of terrorism, Wolfowitz reinforces the
scenic depiction of imminent crisis by suggesting a kind of proactive policy
response:
Well, I think our life is going to be changed by these acts of terrorism. But if
we don't want our way of life to be fundamentally altered, we have got to go
after the terrorists and get rid of them… That is why the stakes in this are so
high. What they want to do is drive us into bunkers, drive us into a crouch,
drive into a defensive posture. We have got to do defensive measures. That's
an important piece of this. And we have to expect that if we go after them, it's
not going to be without serious consequences…But I think it's much better to
take this on now and then be able in future decades not to have to deal with it,
than to constantly think about how we protect ourselves…We ourselves, as
we've been saying repeatedly now, have an enormous debt to that generation
that sacrificed in World War II to end the scourge of Nazism and fascism.
Hopefully, this will not be as bloody a campaign, but we have to expect
sacrifice.
117

This excerpt demonstrates how the scenic language of crisis invites crisis alleviation
through the application of U.S. power. The attacks are put in comparison to the
threats of World War II, and the immense expenditure of effort required to forestall a
Nazi victory. Invoking crisis was becoming the rhetorical means to justify the
application of US power across contexts. To not act would invite the negative
resolution of crisis. Crisis also provides the opportunity to amplify the ethos of the
130
American people and its foreign policy leaders. It establishes a context in which
leaders can act decisively, and intrinsic national strengths can be tested.
On September 14, the following day, Wolfowitz was interviewed on the NPR
show Morning Edition, and then appeared on the PBS show Newshour with Jim
Lehrer that same evening. He declares during the Newshour interview that the events
of 9/11 signaled the end of the previous era for U.S. security, and formally presents a
challenge to the policy status quo: “I hate to use the Pentagon jargon, but thinking
outside the box, recognizing that the assumptions that went into military plans on
September 10 just don't apply anymore and that one has to think about, if necessary,
larger forces.” The Deputy Secretary argues here that the level of mobilization
necessary to prosecute the nascent action to combat terrorism amounts to a
significant level of government commitment, constituting a “sustained campaign.”
118

He offers that the response of the United States would surprise its enemies:
And I think we'll find once again, as has happened before in history,
that evil people, because of the way they think, misread our system as
one that's weak, that can't take casualties, can't take bloodletting, can't
carry out a sustained operation. Hitler made that mistake. The
Japanese made that mistake. It looks like the people on Tuesday made
that mistake
119

Here, he re-contextualizes the attacks to be analogous to attacks of World
War II, laying the groundwork for arguing military mobilization on a massive
scale. While the attacks against the Taliban were still weeks away,
Wolfowitz’s rhetoric of crisis was already seeding the public discourse with
131
an explanatory framework from which future military interventions could be
advocated.
Indeed, his rhetoric in media outlets did not equivocate the first substantial
objective of the campaign after the retributive action against the Taliban in
Afghanistan. Iraq provided a rich symbolic of the developing global “network” of
threat constructed in Wolfowitz’s rhetoric. Iraq fit the outlines of Wolfowitz’s scenic
calculus, and he argued it to be a logical priority for forthcoming security policies. “I
do think and I think former President Bush himself has said that if he had known
Saddam Hussein was going to survive that massive defeat, he might have kept the
war going a bit longer.”
120
While the Bush administration had not officially indicated
that Iraq would be its next target, it did little to silence Wolfowitz. September 11,
2001 marked the beginning of his persistent effort to sway the president towards
considering a preventive military strike on Iraq.
121
By the winter of 2002, Wolfowitz
and Secretary Rumsfeld had organized a sweeping Department of Defense review of
its Iraq plans– setting the stage for the war planning that would begin in earnest in
March.
122

Meanwhile the national news media frame did not yet reflect Wolfowitz’s
arguments linking Iraq to the newly announced War on Terror at first, though they
did little to discredit his arguments. The major national newspapers of 2001, despite
accounts to contrary, retained some skepticism regarding the expansion of the war.

123
While it was certainly evident that television outlets such as Fox News adopted a
relatively uncritical indexing policy – its journalism cleaved to the pronouncements
132
of the administration - some muted forms of criticism remained in the print
media. Most of this criticism came in the form of observing intra-government
dissensus or public disagreement among policy-makers rather than any serious
critique. Such tepid criticism affirmed observations from previous media studies of
foreign policy debate, which indicate that critical coverage seems to surface only in
times of perceived disagreement amongst policy decision-makers.
124

A mild form of dissensus became apparent soon after the QDR testimony in
October of 2001, when fault lines between the State Department and the Pentagon
began to surface over how to prosecute and prioritize the objectives of the terror
attack response. The debate was perceived in the press as largely a political fight
between supposedly competing paradigmatic perspectives of Secretary of State Colin
Powell and Wolfowitz.
125
This conflict seemed at the time to be one which
Wolfowitz destined to lose to the institutional influence of Secretary Powell.
126

Wolfowitz, however, was not without allies in the public sphere. Members of
the “Defense Planning Council”, a semi-official advisory panel tasked to advise the
Department of Defense had become a bully pulpit for its members to advocate the
views espoused by Deputy Secretary. As with the early Committee on the Present
Danger, members of the Defense Planning Council such as Richard Perle and Newt
Gingrich used their position to accentuate the threats that Wolfowitz argued existed
in countries like Iraq.
127
Shortly after Wolfowitz’s QDR testimony, the New York
Times described on October 12 that the powerful group had strong ties to Wolfowitz:
133
The group, which some in the State Department and on Capitol Hill refer
to as the "Wolfowitz cabal," after Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D.
Wolfowitz, is laying the groundwork for a strategy that envisions the use of
air support and the occupation of southern Iraq
128

Newt Gingrich, quoted in the same article, pushed for action against Iraq: ”If we
don't use this as the moment to replace Saddam after we replace the Taliban, we are
setting the stage for disaster."
129
This article suggests that there was at least some
tacit recognition in the press that a like-minded network of advocates was working to
promote the neo-conservative policy position. The views of this constituency were
getting public attention.
There seems little evidence, however, of any serious contrary position to
Wolfowitz policy rhetoric within the administration at the time. The only viewpoint
that differed from Wolfowitz came from Secretary Powell – and the difference was
more a matter of degree than kind. Powell had argued in February of 2001 that
Saddam Hussein was effectively contained by the sanctions regime, and by
September of 2001 argued for more diligent focus establishing international
coalitions to deal with Al-Qaida.
130
In response to Wolfowitz’s call to “end states”
that contributed to terrorism on Sept 13, Powell responded:
We're after ending terrorism. And if there are states and regimes,
nations that support terrorism, we hope to persuade them that it is in
their interest to stop doing that. But I think ending terrorism is where I
would like to leave it, and let Mr. Wolfowitz speak for himself.
131

Despite the Secretary’s clarification, he did little to distance himself from
Wolfowitz’s position of regime change in Iraq. Criticism of the Deputy Secretary
came in sparse examples in the televised news media. As the war in Afghanistan
134
continued through November of 2001, certain media outlets questioned whether
another intervention against Iraq was truly necessary.
For example, Bob Schieffer, on CBS’s Face the Nation on November 18,
2001, directly queried Wolfowitz as to whether he still supported the notion that
Saddam Hussein was the next “target” for the United States campaign against
terrorism. His question reflected the dominant perspective within the news media at
the time; that Powell had (at least temporarily) “won” the debate over whether to
invade Iraq:
I'd like to go back to something that you are reported to have said early on in
this campaign when there seemed to have been an--a--a debate going on
within the inner circles of the administration about whether you just went
after Osama bin Laden, or you also went after Saddam Hussein. And it was
reported that you were one of those who said we should go after Saddam
Hussein also. Your direct quote on the record, while you never commented
on that, was, "This is about more than just one organization." Do you believe
that this war ought to be widened now to include Saddam Hussein, Mr.
Wolfowitz?
132

Schieffer’s question marked a turning point in Wolfowitz’s own campaign. By the
end of 2001, it was not obvious that the national media had fully embraced the full
extent of Wolfowitz’s foreign policy rhetoric. While Wolfowitz had successfully
inserted the possibility of Iraq being the next front in the war on terror into public
discourse, he had yet to promote the notion that an invasion of Iraq was inevitable.
Conclusion
Wolfowitz’s crisis rhetoric had not fully convinced the public of the necessity
of removing Saddam Hussein in a preventive military intervention, but he had
successfully worked to introduce arguments about Iraq onto a national stage and was
135
helped along by a largely uncritical news media. His arguments were supported
by an increasingly commonplace ideological discourse of international relations that
offered a compelling alternative for U.S. foreign policy to Hans Morgenthau’s
realism that had guided policy during the Cold War. To use Zarefsky’s terminology
of rhetorical movements, the next task for administration advocates such as
Wolfowitz was to promote their discourse into a state of rhetorical crisis,
∗∗
where the
movement’s discourse directly challenged or supplanted the dominant status quo
discourse.
133
By the end of 2001, however, the budding framework of the Bush
administration’s “War on Terror” had yet to make the invasion of Iraq an obvious
policy decision.
Despite the turn away from Iraq in public news discourse, the subject would
reemerge by February of 2002 as Vice President Cheney took up the reins of
argument for action against Iraq. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz had already played a
crucial role in laying the terministic groundwork for arguments in favor of Bush
doctrine policies by presenting a consistent vocabulary and narrative to an attentive
national audience. The QDR testimony grounded the Bush administration’s proposed
changes on the premise of a rhetorically constructed scene of international crisis. The
events of 9/11, in retrospect, seemed a convenient justification for the alarmist logic
behind Wolfowitz’s propositions. He remained an indispensable resource for the

∗∗
This term should not be confused with the rhetoric of crisis that I argue to be constitutive of
Wolfowitz’s movement rhetoric. Rhetorical crisis is the chronological phase of a rhetorical movement
during which the insurgent rhetoric directly challenges the discourse of the status quo. Rhetorical
crisis is the stage which defines whether or not the movement successfully usurps the previous
paradigm. See Zarefsky, 1977; Griffin, 1969.
136
“inception phase” of the neo-conservative policy movement, by articulating a
discourse formation that provided the generative rhetoric to sustain future arguments
of the movement. The national media, meanwhile, did little to dispel the framing of
Iraq promoted in his rhetoric. The QDR and the Wolfowitz’s media coverage at the
time provided an available template for media to frame the uncertainties and visceral
drama caused by 9/11. As the ensuing campaigns of Cheney and Powell revealed in
2002, these arguments left on indelible impression on both the American press and
the public perception of the War on Terror in general. Polling on Iraq, which began
in September of 2002, showed a significant degree of public association between the
events of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.
134
Similarly, widespread editorial publications
voiced the sudden recognition that the Iraqi regime was ripe for military intervention.
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s legacy of crisis rhetoric and neo-conservative Cold
War discourse had left a significant imprint on the public argument of the Bush
administration, and grounded the basic argument structure of the rhetorical campaign
for war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003.
137
Chapter 3 Endnotes

1
Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, “Bush’s Foreign Policy Revolution: A Radical
Change,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, September 26, 2004,
http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/daalder/20040926.htm.

2
Douglas Brinkley, “Democratic Enlargement: The Clinton Doctrine,” Foreign
Policy 106 (Spring 1997): 110-127.

3
Robert Ivie, “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and
Now,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 5, no. 2, (2002): 277-285.

4
Joshua Micah Marshall, “Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives,”
Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6, (2003), http://www.foreignaffairs.org/2003/6.html.

5
John Langmore, “The Bush Foreign Policy Revolution, Its Origin and
Alternatives,” Global Policy Forum August, 2004,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/resource/pubs/index.htm.

6
George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss,
& Giroux, 2005), 21.

7
Khurram Husain, “Neocons: the Men Behind the Curtain,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists 59, no. 6, 2003,
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd03husain.

8
James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New
York: Viking), 31.

9
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,”
Foreign Affairs 74, no. 4, (1996): 18-32.

10
Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from
Nixon to Reagan, Revised Edition, (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994).

11
Donald C. Whitmore, “Revisiting Deterrence Theory,” (1998),
http://www.abolishnukes.com/short_essays/deterrence_theory_whitmore.html.

12
Paul Wolfowitz, “The Pot and the Kettle, or Rationality Within Reason: Mr.
Green's Deadly Logic,” in Strategic thinking and its Moral Implications, ed. Morton
Kaplan (New York: Paragon House, 1975), 45-64.

138

13
Ibid., 52.

14
See Mann, Rise of the Vulcans; Stefan Halper and Jonathon Clarke, American
Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004); Packer, Assassin’s Gate, Joshua Muravchik, “The Neo-
Conservative Cabal,” Commentary, September 2003, 26-33.

15
Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. Updated Edition (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

16
Langmore, “Bush Foreign Policy Revolution,” 11.

17
Ibid.

18
Earl Shorris, “Ignoble Liars: Leo Strauss, George Bush, and the Philosophy of
Mass Deception,” Harper’s Magazine, June 2004, 68.

19
Drury, Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, 197.

20
Paul Wolfowitz, “Wolfowitz: WMD Chosen as Reason for Iraq War for
'Bureaucratic Reasons',” CNN.com, May 30, 2003,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0305/30/se.08.html.

21
Tom Barry, “A History of threat Escalation: Remembering Team B,” Rightweb,
February 12, 2004, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0402teamb.php.

22
Albert Wolhstetter quoted in Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 153.

23
Ibid.

24
Ibid., 154.

25
Husain, “Neocons.”

26
Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 63.

27
Ibid.

28
Paul Wolfowitz, interview with Sam Tanenhaus, Vanity Fair, May 9, 2003,
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html.

139

29
Esther Schrader, “Hawkish Defense Aide Doesn't Bend on Anti- Terrorism Stance;
Pentagon: Undeterred by Focus on Bin Laden, Rumsfeld's Deputy Continues to
Insist That U.S. Target Hussein,” Los Angeles Times Oct 7 2001, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

30
Husain, “Neocons.”

31
Ibid.

32
Gordon Mitchell and Robert Newman, “By ‘Any Measures’ Necessary: NSC-68
and Cold War Roots of the 2002 National Security Strategy,” in Hitting First:
Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William Keller and Gordon Mitchell
(Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), 70-92.

33
Ibid., 104.

34
Paul C. Warnke, quoted in Anne Kahn, “The B Team: Paul C. Warnke Reviews
Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55,
no. 1, (1999): 70.

35
Mitchell and Newman, “By ‘Any Measures’ Necessary,” 102.

36
Ibid., 103.

37
Melvin A. Goodman, “Righting the CIA,” The Baltimore Sun, Nov 19, 2004,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

38
Fareed Zakaria, “Exaggerating the Threats,” Newsweek, 16 June 2003.

39
Daniel Hallin has observed that foreign policy becomes open to political pressure
when it appears that government elites publicly disagree – a condition he terms
dissensus. See Daniel Hallin, “The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political support:
A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media,” Journal of Politics 46, no. 1,
(1984): 2-26.

40
Anne Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 29.

41
Cynthia Watson, U.S. National Security Policy Groups: Institutional Profiles,
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 15.

140

42
Packer, The Assassin's Gate, 24.

43
Husain, “Neocons.”

44
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 81.

45
Ibid.

46
Ibid., 80-81.

47
Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana,
(Oxford: Routledge, 2004).

48
Ibid.

49
Husain “Neocons.”

50
Paul Wolfowitz, MacNeil Lehrer Report, April 29, 1991, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

51
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans.

52
Ibid.

53
For examples of his advocacy with the neo-conservatives, see Paul Wolfowitz,
“The United States and Iraq”, in The Future of Iraq, ed. John Calabrese
(Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1997) and Zalmay Khalilzad and Paul
Wolfowitz, “Overthrow Him,” Weekly Standard, December 1, 1997,
http://www.weeklystandard.com/check.asp?idArticle=8876&r=iiuqh.

54
PBS Frontline, "The War Behind Closed Doors," February 20, 2003,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/.

55
William Kristol, interview on Frontline, Jan 14, 2003,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/interviews/kristol.html.

56
Paul Wolfowitz, “Remarks by Paul Wolfowitz to the American Bar Association
Breakfast,” November 21, 1991, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

57
Ibid.

141

58
Ibid.

59
Packer, The Assassin's Gate, 21.

60
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 209.

61
Ibid., 212.

62
Ibid.

63
Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 145.

64
PBS Frontline, “Excerpts from the 1992 Draft: Defense Planning Guidance,”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html.

65
Ibid.

66
Ibid.

67
Packer, The Assassin’s Gate, 21.

68
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 214.

69
Jake Tapper, “Critics: Bush Caved to China,” Salon.com, April 13, 2001,
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/04/13/china/index.html.

70
Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “No Defense,” The Weekly Standard, July 23,
2001; Thomas Ricks, “For Rumsfeld, Many Roadblocks,” Washington Post, August
7, 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28526-
2001Aug3?language=printer.

71
Daniel Williams, “Israel Attacks Gaza Camp with Tanks, Bulldozers,” Washington
Post, April 12, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

72
Marc Lacy, “Attacks Were Up Last Year, U.S. Terrorism Report Says,” New York
Times, April 30, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

73
Christopher Marquis, “Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat,” New York
Times, May 4, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

142

74
“U.S. President Bush Outlines Plan To Develop, Deploy National Missile
Defense,” Facts on File, May 3, 2001,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2001212400.asp.

75
Ibid.

76
Peter Baker, “Bush Seeks Backing For Missile Plan,” Washington Post, May 12,
2001. http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

77
Paul Wolfowitz, “Remarks before the American Jewish Committee,” Capital
Hilton, Washington D.C., May 4, 2001; Paul Wolfowitz, Testimony Before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Testimony on ballistic missile defense policies
and programs in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2002,
107
th
Cong., 1
st
sess., July 12, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

78
“Bush Requests 2002 Spending Increase,” Facts on File, June 28, 2001,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2001218720.asp.

79
Denise Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis, (Columbia,
SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994); Amos Kiewe, ed., The Modern
Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, (Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 1994).

80
Uncertainty is a defining term behind much of neo-conservative foreign policy
discourse. For example, see the Robert Kagan and William Kristol editorial “The
Gathering Storm,” The Weekly Standard, October 19, 2002,
http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/384thhhq.asp.
For a scholarly survey, see Colin Deuck, “Ideas and Alternatives in American Grand
Strategy, 2000-2004,” Review of International Studies 30, (2004): 511-535.

81
Paul Wolfowitz, "Remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,"
Michie Stadium, West Point, NY, Saturday, June 2, 2001,
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010602-depsecdef.html.

82
Ibid.

83
William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, ”
Foreign Affairs 74, no. 4, (1996): 18-32.

84
Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 100; 138.

143

85
Brent Scowcroft, "Don't Attack Iraq," Wall Street Journal, July 15 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

86
For some conceptual depictions of realism and foreign policy, see Judith Goldstein
and Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political
Change, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) and Gideon Rose
“Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51, no. 1,
(1998): 144-172.

87
Paul Wolfowitz, Remarks at West Point, 2001.

88
At a press conference in 2003, Bush declared that he did not “govern by polls or
focus groups.” George W Bush, "New SEC Chairman Sworn in," February 18, 2002.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030218-1.html.

89
Wolfowitz, Remarks at West Point, 2001.

90
Ibid.

91
“Pentagon Outlines Testing Plans,” Facts on File, July 19, 2001,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2001220680.asp; Paul D. Wolfowitz, “Sound
bites – Paul Wolfowitz on Missile Defense Plans,” The Newshour with Jim Lehrer,
July 12, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

92
Douglas Kellner, "Spectacle and Media Propaganda in the War on Iraq: A Critique
of U.S. Broadcasting Networks," in War, Media, and Propaganda, ed. Yahya R.
Kamalipour and Nancy Snow (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Group, 2004).

93
Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 184-92; Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror
War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
2003); Michael Lind, "How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and
Launched a War," Salon.com, (2003),
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2003/04/09/neocons/index.html.

94
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” NPR Morning Edition, July 13,
2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

95
"Indefensible Defense Budget," The Washington Post, July 20 2001,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

144

96
Christian Science Monitor Special Report. Empire Builders: Neocons 101.
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html.

97
"From Remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz," The
Washington Post, July 15 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

98
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” Fox News Sunday with Tony
Snow, July 13, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

99
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” ABC’s Nightline with Ted
Koppel, July 24, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

100
Ibid.

101
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” CNN Evans, Novak, Hunt &
Shields, July 28, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

102
Ibid.

103
John Tirpak, “The QDR Goes to War,” Air Force Magazine Online 84, no, 12,
2001, http://www.afa.org/magazine/Dec2001/1201qdr.asp.

104
“Background Briefing on the QDR,” United States Department of Defense News
Transcript, Oct 1, 2001,
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2001/t10012001_t1001bck.html.

105
Jim Garamone, “Quadrennial Review Shifts Transformation Into High Gear,”
American Forces Information Service, October 2, 2001,
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10022001_200110024.html.

106
Paul Wolfowitz, Testimony Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the
Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review, Building a Military for the
21st Century, 107
th
Cong., 1
st
sess., October 4, 2001.

107
Ibid.

108
Ibid.

109
Ibid.

145

110
David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics
of Identity, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).; James Der
Derian, "Decoding The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,"
boundary 2 30, no. 3, (2003): 19-27.

111
Paul Wolfowitz quoted in Richard Whittle, “Military Can Ese Many Tactics to
Execute ‘War on Terrorism,’” Seattle Times, September 14, 2001, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

112
Paul Wolfowitz quoted in Thomas Ricks, “Air power to team with special
forces,” Washington Post, September 20, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

113
Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Prepares to brief NATO on strategy to beat Bin Laden,”
New York Times, September 25, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

114
Martin Durham, “The American Right and the Iraq War,” The Political Quarterly
75, no. 3 (2004): 257-65.
115
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” Fox Special Report with Brit
Hume, September 13, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

116
Ibid.

117
Ibid.

118
Paul Wolfowitz, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” Newshour with Jim Lehrer,
September 14, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

119
Ibid.

120
Ibid.

121
Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, 30-33.

122
Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, 332; Packer, The Assassin’s Gate, 45.

123123
Kellner, "Spectacle and Media Propaganda."

124
Daniel Hallin, The Uncensored War (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1986); Philip J. Powlick and Andrew Z. Katz, "Defining the American Public
Opinion/Foreign Policy Nexus," The International Studies Review 42, no. 1 (1998):
29-61.

146

125
Patrick Tyler and Elaine Scioliano, "Bush Advisors Split on Scope of
Retaliation," New York Times, September 20, 2001. http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.; Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, “At Camp David, Advise and
Dissent,” Washington Post, January 31, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

126
Mark Matthews, “The Resurrection of Colin Powell,” Baltimore Sun, October 8,
2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

127
Harry Levins, “Debate Centers on Whether Iraq is Next Target,” St. Louis
Dispatch. Dec 31, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.; Elaine Sciolino and
Allison Mitchell, “Calls for New Push into Iraq Gain Power in Washington,” New
York Times, December 2, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe; Tom Baxter,
“Gingrich Predicted Terror’s Rise,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 2,
2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

128
Elaine Sciolino and Patrick E. Taylor, "Saddam Hussein: Some Pentagon
Officials and Advisers Seek to Oust Iraq's Leader in War's Next Phase," New York
Times, October 12 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

129
Ibid.

130
Colin Powell, “Secretary of State Colin Powell Delivers Remarks from Egypt,”
FDCH Political Transcripts, February 24, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe;
“U.S. Secretary of State Powell Visits Pakistan, India,” Facts on File, October 18,
2001, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2001228570.asp.

131
Colin Powell quoted in “The War Behind Closed Doors: The Evolution of The
Bush Doctrine,” Frontline,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/cron.html.

132
. Bob Schieffer, “Interview with Paul Wolfowitz,” Face the Nation with Bob
Scheiffer, November 18, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

133
David Zarefsky, “President Johnson’s War on Poverty: The Rhetoric of Three
Establishment Movements,” Communication Monographs 44 (1977): 353.

134
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11
Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3,
(2005): 525-537.

147

Chapter 4
Richard Cheney: Defending the President by arguing for war
The day the United States began its unprecedented preemptive military
invasion of Iraq also marked the culmination of an extensive rhetorical campaign.
How had the nation, already traumatized by the attacks of September 11, 2001 been
lead into such an adventure? On September 6, 2003, the Washington Post published
a poll showing that seven out of ten Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had
played a role in the 9/11 attacks two years prior.
1
Despite subsequent congressional
investigations and commissions declaring that Iraq had little or no connection to the
Al-Qaida terrorist organizations, a majority of Americans believed that Iraq was
linked to the 9/11.
2
By 2003 the public discourse on Iraq had progressed little beyond
the claims of the Bush administration’s pro-war rhetoric of 2002.
This shared public perception was a testimony to the administration’s
rhetorical movement to cultivate belief that an invasion of Iraq was both necessary
and sensible. The success of this movement, however, cannot be attributed to the
President’s arguments or to overt misinformation alone. Instead, other actors within
the administration articulated and expanded neo-conservative discourse through
media channels and public appearances to build a public consensus that the President
was leading the next logical action in its War on Terror. The most central figure in
this campaign was Vice President Richard Cheney. This chapter explores how this
presidential advisor engaged in a campaign of public argument for war. Cheney is

148

presented as an advisor who effectively framed public perception of the imminent
war in both in venues of formal address and in media appearances. Through his
recurrent application of crisis rhetoric, the Vice President forwarded the rationale for
war while shielding the president from direct criticism, granting the Bush
administration at least the outward appearance that it only reluctantly decided on
war.
The case of Cheney’s pre-war rhetoric in 2002 unfolds as a series of
rhetorical episodes timed both to build the sense of threat and to deflect criticism of
the administration’s handling of international terrorism. The results of his efforts are
readily observable. Available pre-war polls demonstrate that the American public
believed in an inflated sense of threat from Iraq, with significant numbers believing
that Iraq colluded with Al-Qaida on 9/11.
3
The numbers reveal the success of
administration efforts to collapse the threat posed by between Al-Qaida with Iraq in
public opinion, thus heightening the imminence of threat posed by the regime of
Saddam Hussein.
4
Such a shift could not have occurred without a rhetorical
campaign to manage the discourse of foreign policy, including both the language and
reasoning through which a war against Iraq could be defended. Throughout much of
the rhetorical campaign in 2002, Vice President Richard Cheney would translate
what had previously been the project of the “neo-conservative” foreign policy
agenda into a set of arguments articulating crisis.

149

The centrality of presidential advisors like Cheney in the prewar rhetoric of
2002 does not diminish the role played by the president. This study argues that
Bush’s rhetoric provided a more generalized, abstract rationale that would later be
elaborated by Cheney in the spring and summer of 2002, and subsequently Powell in
the fall of 2002 through winter 2003, to establish support for war in Iraq. Indeed,
President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union represented an important milestone in the
administration’s rhetorical campaign, signaling the shape of later policy arguments.
Yet forces within the administration were aligning to forge a coherent body of
rhetoric and reasoning that would structure the campaign throughout much of 2002
and 2003. Both Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell sustained
the arguments about Iraq across episodes of public debate and policy development.
Cheney, rather than the President, served as the hub of strategic movement on Iraq;
he was the effective “trial balloon” of the emerging “Bush doctrine.” Powell, for his
part, would later take up the mantle of Cheney’s rhetoric and attempt to legitimize
the arguments for war to the international community. This chapter focuses on the
arguments made by the Vice President, who leveraged his exposure in the national
media to forward the war agenda and elaborate a structure of policy arguments that
obviated the goal of military intervention.
Vice President Cheney’s central arguments develop over time, building in
conviction and certainty through a series of public appearances between January and
September of 2002. Cheney delivered a total of 23 speeches, appeared on 11

150

television interviews, and participated in 10 “media availabilities.”
5
This chapter
examines selections of these public appearances representative of his crisis rhetoric,
with the significant critical attention paid to the 103
rd
Annual Veterans of Foreign
Wars Convention on August 26, 2002. The Vice President’s speech and his other
public appearances are assessed for how they outlined and sustained the ideological
discourse of the administration. This analysis shows how Cheney handled the burden
of sustaining the argument for war in a manner that both shielded the president from
significant criticism and also nurtured a broader sense of imminent crisis. The
chapter looks at three stages of his contribution to the 2002 rhetorical campaign for
war against Iraq; each reflecting the development of argument in relation to the
contextual challenges facing the administration. Each of these sections reflect a key
“push” by the administration to advance its rhetorical objectives:
1. The Iraqi Threat is introduced (February through March 2002)
2. Defending Bush by Reasserting the Iraqi Threat (April through May 2002)
3. Making the Case for War (August through September 2002)
These sections cover an episode of argument that was reactive to the demands of the
rhetorical campaign at the time. The analysis looks to both the structure of Cheney’s
arguments and how they constituted a rhetorical movement. Each section also shows
how arguments made by the Vice President either shaped or responded to the
presence of critical discourse (or lack thereof) in the national media. Media reaction
to Cheney’s arguments are reviewed to demonstrate the capacity of the

151

administration to shape the social imagination justifying war. The analysis is
presented in chronological order, and begins by looking at his initial efforts to bring
Iraq onto the national agenda in early 2002.
The Iraqi threat is introduced
Vice President Richard Cheney took up the burdens of the rhetorical campaign
against Iraq in February of 2002, ostensibly to forward the goal outlined by President
Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address of dealing the threatening nation’s that
comprised the “axis of evil.” A military intervention in Iraq, however, evidently
needed the stewardship of the Vice President to make it a policy reality. As journalist
Ron Suskind describes, the Iraq war was ultimately Cheney’s own project,
“emerging from the left brain of the Vice President.”
6
Historical accounts by both
George Packer and James Mann give intellectual credit for the Iraq war to Paul
Wolfowitz, the most visible advocate among neo-conservatives who had long argued
for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Yet Packer notes that it was Cheney who would
eventually drive these arguments to their logical conclusion in war. He is described
as the lynchpin of institutional actors with the administration; a “mystery” figure,
possessing a “darker, more Hobbesian vision of international affairs.”
7
Packer’s
description positions the Vice President as an indispensable figure in the foreign
policy process, noting that when he settled on Iraq as a serious threat, war with Iraq
was inevitable.
8
Yet Cheney’s role was more than simply administrative, as previous
historical accounts entail. His efforts were also fundamentally discursive. The Vice

152

President distilled for the American public the basic reasoning behind President
Bush’s strategic transformation that was the War on Terror, and presented Iraq as the
strategy’s next logical target.
The Vice President’s rhetoric on Iraq in 2002 began with suggestive rather
than direct statements about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq, and reached a
climax of crisis-laden rhetoric in his August 26, 2002 speech at a gathering of the
Veteran’s of Foreign Wars annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee. His own
portion of the administration’s rhetorical campaign, however, began with speeches in
February of 2002, followed by three high-profile appearances on nationally televised
talk shows on March 24, 2002 – each staged to bring the subject of Iraq onto the
national agenda. These early appearances allowed Cheney to introduce Iraq as a
logical outgrowth of the War on Terror, and featured the Vice President beginning to
link the threats posed by the Al-Qaida terrorist organization responsible for 9/11 to
the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. These appearances were the formative
instances of crisis rhetoric on Iraq, and would steadily build in intensity and threat
amplification as the months progressed. By the end of February of 2002, the
administration had quietly begun logistical operations to build up military capability
in the Middle East.
The administration’s “discursive crescendo” against Iraq began with
President Bush’s State of the Union speech on January 29, 2002.
9
Bush’s speech
established a discursive baseline from which Cheney could craft his arguments based

153

upon the premises established in its advocacy for decisive and immediate action.
Bush provided a crisis-laden framework for the Vice President to elaborate: the
United States would not abide states that could sponsor terrorism, and states that did
so posed an imminent threat. In particular, the State of the Union established urgency
as a priority in policy argument. The President proclaimed: “Time is not on our side.
I will not wait on events, while… the United States will not permit the most
dangerous regimes to threaten us with weapons of mass destruction.”
10
The speech
was a startling declaration against cautious realism; an aggressive shift in security
strategy that anticipated the need for preemptive action against potential threats.
Bush’s speech immediately raised alarms in foreign capitals and among foreign
policy experts that the United States had shifted to dangerously aggressive posture.
11

To quell international concerns, Secretary Powell stated that there were no plans for
military intervention against Iran or North (two of the “axis of evil” identified in
address), yet he provided no such assurances about Iraq.
12
With the beginnings of a
strategic discourse presented for public consumption, Cheney was then free to apply
the logic to Iraq.
On February 15, Cheney spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington DC. By this time the administration was already weathering
international criticism over the prospect of preemptive action against Iraq.
13
The
Vice President responded to these critics by declaring the United States would use all
the means at its disposal to deal with threats posed by states who produced weapons

154

of mass destruction. Cheney argued that Iraq was becoming the foremost
administration priority outside of its attempts to counter Al-Qaida. “If you were to
put together a list of states….clearly [Iraq is] got to be one we focus on."
14
He
offered in this speech what would be the foundational casus belli arguments
regarding Iraq:
"Not only do they have a robust set of programs to develop their own
weapons of mass destruction; this is a place that's used it," he
continued. "And we know he drove the inspectors out three years ago,
and we know he has been actively and aggressively doing everything
he can to enhance his capabilities. He has in the past had some
dealings with terrorists, clearly. Abu Nidal for a long time operated
out of Baghdad.”
15

Here, a case is made for Iraq to be considered as a credible threat in its own right and
an explicit association between Iraq and terrorism – a threat central to the security
concerns outlined in the President’s address on January 29. The speech outlined the
basic structure of claims linking terrorism to Saddam Hussein’s capacity to assist
terror and to his record of flaunting the concerns of the international community.
The timing of Cheney’s burgeoning role as evangelist for Bush’s newly
articulated War on Terror strategy appeared a matter of political expediency for the
administration. By January of 2002, the Vice President was the target of media
scrutiny over a growing controversy between his office and the General Accounting
Office involving unpublished records of Cheney’s Energy Task Force commission.
The GAO had announced on January 26 that it would be filing court motions to force
Cheney to make public the record of his energy task force meetings, which in theory

155

would influence national energy policy decision-making.
16
His refusal on the
grounds of preserving the rights of the Executive branch to private counsel sparked
the interest of congressional Democrats, who tasked the GAO with investigating
meetings allegedly including leaders of the Enron Corporation. While Cheney was
adamant in defending his position in the national media, by February of 2002 his
rhetoric was diverting media attention to the threat posed by Iraq.
After his Council on Foreign Relations speech, Cheney made two speeches in
California, on February 18 and 19, where he reinforced his previous claim that
Saddam Hussein “single-handedly sought weapons of mass destruction and the
means to deliver them," and that Iraq “harbors terrorist groups, including Abu Nidal
and the Palestine Liberation Front ”
17
At the Marine Corps Naval Air Station in San
Diego, Cheney argued that President Bush’s dramatic declaration of the “axis of
evil” was a kind of necessary straight talk. "The president's remarks caused a certain
amount of hand-wringing in some quarters… But most Americans find it reassuring
to have a commander in chief who tells the truth and means exactly what he says."
18

In making this claim, he refuted attacks on the President by suggesting it was just
what the nation needed to hear. This statement presaged the argument strategy that
emerged later against those who questioned the scope of the Iraqi threat: to be
ambivalent towards the possible threat posed by Iraq would itself be a dangerous
precedent. The nation, according to Cheney, required forthright and unambiguous
assessments of threat.

156

The Vice President’s Iraq rhetoric during the early weeks of 2002 mirrored a
resolve forming within the administration. The crisis rhetoric amplifying the Iraqi
threat became increasingly necessary for the administration given that it had started
to prepare for war. By March of 2002, President Bush had made the decision to make
regime change the primary objective of U.S. policy towards Iraq, with military
intervention being the most likely means to achieve this goal.
19
The administration
redirected many of its intelligence operations from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf,
and the Vice President’s office was by that time meeting regularly with Iraqi
dissident groups.
20
Meanwhile, the President brusquely dismissed alternatives to
invasion when questioned by Senators during a private meeting during March.
21

What remained for the administration was to crafting compelling and credible
arguments that could galvanize broad-based support for a preventive military
intervention. Other events in the Middle East, however, were interceding on the
administration’s nascent rhetorical campaign.
By March of 2002, the conflict between the Palestinian Authority and Israel
worsened after a string of suicide attacks inside Israel in January of 2002. The
deepening crisis prompted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to fly to Washington,
where he urged the United States to play a more prominent role in brokering a
cessation of violence. Mubarak came with a peace proposal offered by the Saudi
government and suggested that peace in Palestinian territories be the highest priority
for the U.S. in the region.
22
The Vice President was then dispatched to the Middle

157

East on a nine-day tour to rejuvenate the stalled negotiations between Yassir Arafat
and Ariel Sharon’s respective governments.
23
Cheney’s first public statements on the
tour, however, signaled the more pressing interests of the administration – to shore
up support amongst Arab governments for an intervention against Iraq.
On March 11, 2002, the Vice President appeared with British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and proposed that Iraq constituted a regional concern on par with the
violence in the Palestinian territories. Blair offered a vote of confidence for the
administration’s arguments, while Cheney claimed that actions against Iraq could not
be satisfied by inspections alone. Rather than construct an elaborate case against
Iraq, he instead shifted the onus of the issue back to Saddam Hussein, whose
disregard for UN-mandated weapons inspections itself marked the regime as an
legitimate threat:
The question is whether or not Saddam is compliance with Resolution
687, under which he pledged to get rid of all weapons of mass
destruction. The inspectors were there as a device to be able to assure
the world that he in fact complied with the resolution. He's not
complied with the resolution. He's now kicked the inspectors out.
There's a lot of evidence that he does, in fact, have and is continuing
to develop weapons of mass destruction.
24

The Vice President’s broad accusatory statements frame the conclusion of Iraqi guilt
as already presumed, and prompted debate on a preferred international response to
Iraq’s violations. As the New York Times observed, the “unstated and barely
disguised assumption” behind his arguments was that unconditional inspections
could only occur if Saddam Hussein’s regime was removed.
25
Such a demand was

158

justified, in Cheney’s rhetoric, if Saddam Hussein could be linked to the visceral
threat posed by terrorist organizations like Al-Qaida.
In his February speeches, the Vice President posed the possibility that
Saddam Hussein was a terrorist collaborator. This largely unsubstantiated association
became fuel for media probing in March. While the news media may not have
advocated, per se, the talking points of the administration’s rhetorical campaign,
news media attention gave the administration’s arguments continued exposure.
During Cheney’s media availability with Tony Blair on March 11, CNN’s Paula
Zahn offered the Vice President the opportunity to provide “evidence” of the threat
posed by Saddam Hussein. He responded by suggesting the possibility of Iraq
working with Al-Qaida, an already established threat in the public consciousness:
[W]e know they clearly, given their past track record, would use such
weapons were they able to acquire them, and we have to be concerned
about the potential marriage, if you will, between a terrorist
organization like Al Qaeda and those who hold or are proliferating
knowledge about weapons of mass destruction. So the concern is very
real. It's very great.
26

Cheney declared that the “concern” was great, without reference to the actual
probability of such a symbolic “marriage.” Nevertheless, his concern hinted at an
argument logic emerging in his statements – that suspicion of threat overshadowed
the probability of threat in arguing for a necessary change in security policy.
The remainder of the Middle East trip took him from London to appearances
with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel - all reluctant to voice support for the
Bush administration’s plans regarding Iraq. The Vice President’s attempts to

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foreground the issue of Iraq as a regional security concerns were largely dismissed
by these leaders, who demanded greater attention be paid to the simmering Israeli-
Palestinian conflict on the West Bank.
27
Jordan’s King Abdullah, in particular,
cautioned that any action Iraq would impact the “stability and security of the region”
and suggested the United States pursue the resolution of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction through peaceful means.
28
On the eve of Cheney’s visit, King Abdullah
took the unprecedented step of going on U.S. television to address the American
people. Abdullah stated on the ABC show Nightline that a military action against
Iraq was not in the “United States' interests, or the interest of the region, or the
world's interest....And I don't believe it will achieve the desired result."
29
The Vice
President returned on March 20 having failed to garner significant support for U.S.
action against Iraq, and no resolution to the violence in the Palestinian territories.
The trip represented Cheney’s last significant effort to present arguments on
Iraq to international audiences. Soon after his return, he reasserted the centrality of
the Iraqi threat to the domestic audience by appearing on three of the national
political talk-shows on March 24, 2002 (CNN with Wolf Blitzer, CBS’s Face the
Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press). These venues provided a platform to elaborate a
prepared logic justifying Iraq as a threat, in an environment that was neither
confrontational nor combative. The talk-show format allowed the Vice President to
present arguments about Iraq in relation to the other salient issues of foreign policy,
enabling him to establish Iraq’s urgency in the hierarchy of the government’s

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security responsibilities. Though each interview queried Cheney on the result of his
trip to the Middle East, they afforded him a broad canvas to draw equivalencies
between the Israel/Palestinian issue and the supposed Iraq threat.
These interviews exhibited the news media’s tendency to “index” its
presentation of foreign affairs issues within the discourse provided by the
government.
30
Across all three interviews, the anchor’s questions reflected positions
already articulated by Cheney and the Bush administration in the previous eight
weeks. Little in the way of new arguments or language outside the domain of claims
already put forth by the government was tested. Instead, they afforded the Vice
President the chance to engage in advocacy masked as clarification of previous
government statements about Iraq.
On the March 24 airing of CBS’s Face the Nation, Cheney addressed the
issue of his trip to the Middle East with a revisionist appraisal Arab reaction to the
U.S. plans for Iraq. He described the leaders of the region as recognizing the
potential dangers posed by Saddam Hussein:
What I came away with, Bob, is the sense that they share our concern,
and that--that the--the notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil
wealth, with his inventory that he already has of biological and
chemical weapons, that he might actually acquire a nuclear weapon is,
I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it.
And part of my task out there was to go out and begin the dialogue
with our friends to make sure they were thinking about it.
31

This move anticipates polling later in 2002, which found that a significant percentage
of Americans supported military action against Iraq only if it was accompanied by

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international support.
32
Rather than admit to failure, he reinforces his previous claims
of threat by suggesting that the Arab leaders did not refute the possibility of a danger
posed by Iraq. In his retelling, Arab leaders agreed implicitly with U.S. concerns that
the nature of the Iraqi danger came in the form of Iraq seeking “weapons of mass
destruction.”
During a CNN interview on March 24, 2002, the Vice President told Wolf
Blitzer that Saddam Hussein was actively involved in the pursuit of WMD’s. Rather
than provide evidence supporting this claim, Cheney instead links this assertion to a
judgment of Hussein’s moral character:
The issue is that he's developing and has biological weapons. The
issue is that he's pursuing nuclear weapons. It's the weapons of mass
destruction and what he's already done with them. This is a man of
great evil, as the president said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear
weapons at this time, and we think that's cause for concern for us and
for everybody in the region.
33

Here Cheney is responding to Blitzer’s inquiry about the utility of further inspections
to ascertain if Saddam Hussein had disposed of his weapons stockpiles or
development facilities. His response betrays his bias against the involvement of the
international community in any way that might hinder U.S. plans for action against
Iraq.
The March 24 episode of Meet the Press with Tim Russert featured the least
probative journalism offered by Cheney’s interviewers, who all exhibited little
critical candor. The Vice President was offered questions that implicitly accepted the
premises of the Bush administration’s stance towards Saddam Hussein. For example,

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Russert presumes the possibility that Saddam Hussein was actually in possession or
actually seeking weapons of mass destruction (an already established talking point of
the Vice President’s arguments). Rather than question the veracity of that
provocative claim, Russert asks, “will we allow that to happen? Will we allow him
[Saddam] to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction?” and “Is the bottom
line in the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein is evil and he must go?”
34
In
asking these questions, Russert appears to accept the moral language of “evil” and
the presumed Iraqi motivation towards acquiring weapons.
Russert’s questioning invites the Vice President to speculate on how the
United States would act, rather than demand hard evidence. Cheney responds by
presenting the logic of suspicion rather than on offer a hard case against Saddam - by
drawing an analogy between Iraq’s threat and the attacks of 9/11:
I would say there is grave concern on our part. That's been heightened
partly by the events of September 11, which demonstrated our
vulnerability, partly by virtue of the fact that we've seen the terrorist
organization, al-Qaeda now, with major efforts to acquire these
capabilities. We don't have any evidence yet that they actually
acquired them, but we know they were trying very hard on chemical,
nuclear and biological weapons.
35

While he acknowledges a lack of evidence, his implicit argument conveys that action
was necessary given the gravity of potential threat. Here he overtly frames his
response in reference to 9/11, further linking Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaida. This
excerpt showed how Russert, for his part, generously provided Cheney leading
questions. Rather than elevate public discourse to the level of deliberative inquiry, it

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appeared the talk shows only entrenched the issue of Iraqi threat in the broader
discourse of imminent terror and crisis.
The Vice President’s appearances on these talk-show interviews served
several purposes. First, they provided an opportunity for him to shore up public
belief that an intervention against Iraq was, in fact, in the interests of maintaining
national security. Newspaper coverage of the Vice President’s trip to the Middle East
and previous speeches after the Bush State of Union suggested that administration
rhetoric was provoking international concern, and not any general consensus that war
against Iraq was necessary.
36
Despite the print media’s previous critical attention,
however, Cheney’s rather blunt claims made during this talk show blitz were
effectively ignored in these interviews.
Second, the talk-show provided an ideal environment to articulate the kind of
logic the administration was presenting. The interviewers’ lack of serious rejoinder
to Cheney’s claims resulted in a string of arguments about Iraq with little or no
rebuttal or serious probing. The Vice President was free to suggest that actual
evidence was unnecessary to justify a major strategic decision, and that military
action could be based on simple deductions based on retrospective evaluation of
Saddam Hussein’s character.
Third, the nature of the format was an important nation-wide outlet for the
administration’s rhetorical campaign. By appearing on these shows, the Vice
President leveraged three channels to a national audience. Critical topics were

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addressed and defined with a circumscribed and prepared set of “talking point”
arguments that elaborated the rather general discourse initially laid out by Bush in
January. At the same time, the venues were not so high profile as to attain the
audience of national public address by the President. In other words, the Vice
President could advance the administration’s language and reasoning about Iraqi as a
“trial balloon.” Cheney’s appearances shielded the President from widespread
scrutiny while “seeding” the on-going coverage with the language and claims about
Iraq for journalists to seize upon. He could leverage the talk-shows for the
propagation of administration discourse and test the viability of its principal
arguments. If the critical aspect of the interviewers’ questions were any indication,
his initial recourse to the airwaves after his Middle East trip was a marked success.
The lull in administration criticism, however, was short-lived – as media attention
drifted back to its handling of 9/11 in April and May of 2002.
Defending Bush by reasserting the Iraqi threat
By April of 2002, the administration’s near monopoly of the nation’s foreign
policy discourse was beginning to erode. While it had enjoyed considerable
bipartisan support for the campaign in Afghanistan to remove the Taliban regime,
defining the next “phase” of the War on Terror was becoming increasingly political.
Members of Congress began to voice concerns over foreign policy. As Congressman
Lindsay Graham stated, “when there’s no clear course, Congress tends to weigh in.
And there is a state of confusion in foreign policy matters.”
37
Secretary of State

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Powell’s April trip to resolve the crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
had failed, while the administration continued to press for action against Iraq. As
foreign policy priorities began to diversify amidst continued Middle East violence,
questions arose as to whether Iraq was an appropriate focus for the administration.
On March 19, Republican Senator John Warner argued that U.S. news
coverage revealed the administration’s fixation on Iraq and observed that more
justification for action against Iraq was necessary. “The fact of the matter is, every
day we pick up our paper we read that the president is directing a lot of thought to
taking out Saddam Hussein militarily… We’ve got to prepare the American people
for the consequences.”
38
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel also weighed in, claiming
that the U.S. had no “options on Iraq now because of Israel.”
39
Despite such
criticism, the President remained popular.
Pressure on the administration increased by May of 2002, as bipartisan
support was building to establish some sort of investigation to examine intelligence
failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Congressional Democrats, pressured from
their constituents to mount some form of opposition to the President, began a
tentative push for an independent, bipartisan commission.
40
This effort was
immediately seized by congressional Republicans and members of the administration
as a political ploy, who responded that the Democrats were engaged in unpatriotic
activity against the President.
41
The Democrat’s reluctance to mount a strong
rhetorical response against the administration offered another opportunity for Bush’s

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subordinates to bolster the War on Terror. In particular, the controversy opened a
window for the Vice President to reinvigorate the urgency of crisis behind the
administration’s plans.
Between May 19 and 22, Cheney spearheaded a response to those arguing for
a commission on national television, by asserting with renewed confidence that a
terrorist attack was imminent. On the May 19 episode of Fox News Sunday with
Tony Snow, he claims, “the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a
certainty. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next
year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared."
42
Cheney had
previously expressed how investigations could damage the necessary secrecy behind
the administration’s actions to thwart terrorist attacks.
43
Rather than rebut the
arguments for such a commission, the Vice President instead paints a dire scene of
looming threat to the United States – a threat that could be magnified if intelligence
agencies were bogged down in internal investigations. On the May 19 Meet the Press
with Tim Russert, he repeats the argument that a new terrorist attack was likely and
explained that the United States needed to address all serious threats. Russert asks
whether warnings suggested that terrorists could pose a nuclear threat to the United
States. In response, Cheney returns to Iraq:
But that's one of the reasons--it takes us back into the axis of evil
speech the president made at the State of the Union, our concerns
about Iraq, our concerns about the possible marriage, if you will,
between the terrorist organization on the one hand and a state that has
or is developing weapons of mass destruction on the other. And if you
ever get them married up--that is if somebody who has nukes decides

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to share one with a terrorist organization, with the expectation they'll
use it against us, obviously we've got another problem.
44

Here the rhetorical effort to construct the international environment, or scene,
of crisis depicts terrorists and states like Iraq as interchangeable faces of a
common enemy. In both the Fox and Meet the Press Interviews, the
arguments shifted seamlessly between the “certainty” of threat posed by
terrorists, and the already established premise that Iraq was part of this global
pattern.
This scene of crisis was crucial to the policy arguments that the Vice
President was trying to establish. By articulating a scene rife with pervasive
threats, the administration afforded itself a range of opportunities to propose
policies that addressed such threats. Action became the keyword to the
ideological consistency of Cheney’s policy argumentation. Yet his premise
that Iraq posed a threat remained unexamined and unsubstantiated. The Vice
President simply stated that threats mandated some sort of unimpeded,
decisive action. To not act was to invite disaster. On May 22, CNN’s Larry
King unwittingly reaffirms this policy logic with his own question posed to
Cheney:
KING: You just play defense, someone's going to score.
CHENEY: That's right. And what you have to do is also go on
offense. We've got to go eliminate the terrorists, and that
obviously is the major part of the effort that's under way now,
but it takes time.
45

168

In each of these three appearances, the Vice President was never seriously criticized
for his administration’s opposition to a 9/11 commission. Instead, the interviewers
were structured the discussion around Cheney’s dramatic claims about the
imminence of a crisis. The Vice President used the format to subtly reinforce the
symbolic marriage between Islamic terrorism and Iraq, while amplifying crisis to
deflect public attention away from questions of necessity, efficacy, or cost. As
Senator Warner had observed in March, the news media was still engaged in the
relatively uncritical transmission of the administration’s Iraq talking points. As the
summer of 2002 wore on, neither the media nor the Democratic opposition did much
to challenge the “inevitability” of a war against Iraq in public discourse. Only in
August of 2002 would a serious challenge be made public. This challenge prompted
the Vice President, and not the President, to make the most explicit case yet made by
the United States against Iraq.
Making the case for war
In June of 2002, Bush elaborated the implications of his 2002 State of the
Union in a significant speech at the West Point Commencement ceremony. In the
speech, Bush articulated the core arguments for a preemptive attack against Iraq.
These arguments would later be formalized in the National Security Strategy
statement released in September of 2002. Bush argued that the secretive and
imminent nature of Iraqi threat justified the application of American power. "If we
wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…We must take the

169

battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they
emerge."
46
Here, preemption was clarified as a mandate for action, “in the world we
have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action.” The scenic sense of crisis
had already been cultivated in the administration’s rhetoric, creating an exigency to
be met by the president’s grand strategy.
47
By June of 2002, Bush could confidently
declare that “security will require all Americans to be forward looking and resolute,
to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend
our lives.” Bush’s statement left little doubt that Iraq would be the next target of the
administration’s sweeping campaign against terrorism.
Yet universal acceptance of Bush’s Iraq plans had yet to materialize in the
public sphere. Criticism from Republican Party luminaries and legislators challenged
the logic of the administration’s plan in August of 2002. The Senate Foreign
relations committee conducted hearings that openly questioned the logic of a
preemptive war in Iraq.
48
On July 31, Republican Senator Richard Lugar declared
that a military operation against Iraq “is not an action that can be sprung on the
American people.”
49
Representative Dick Army, the House Republican Majority
leader, also argued against such an attack. “I don’t believe that America will
justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation.”
50
James Baker, who had
served as the previous president Bush’s Secretary of State, argued that a military
intervention should be predicated on assent from the international community.
51
The
most public of the disagreements, however, arose from Brent Scowcroft, the former

170

President Bush’s national security advisor, and former Secretary of State Lawrence
Eagleburger.
On the June 6 episode of Face the Nation, Scowcroft openly refuted the
government’s claims that the United States had justification to go to war without first
getting the UN to renew weapons inspections. “If he [Hussein] doesn’t agree to it,
that gives you the casus belli that we really don’t have right now.”
52
On August 16,
Scowcroft published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that a military
intervention in Iraq would create an “explosion of outrage” amongst Arab regimes
that would “seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign
we have undertaken.”
53
Lawrence Eagleburger expressed similar doubts during an
August 18 interview on Fox News, “I don't think it's legitimate policy at this stage,
unless the president can demonstrate to all of us that Saddam has his finger on a
nuclear, biological or chemical trigger and he's about to use it.”
54
Such criticism
captured the media’s attention during August. The New York Times ran a series of
articles highlighting dissension amongst prominent Republicans over the issue of
Iraq, which prompted many conservative commentators to complain about the
political bias of the paper.
55
As during May, when public controversy threatened the
perceived government consensus, Cheney moved to quell dissent by presenting the
most direct arguments yet made about the need to intervene in Iraq.
The need for Cheney to intervene was prompted both by public debate and
by what the administration was already doing to prepare for war in Iraq. By late July

171

of 2002, General Tommy Franks had been given carte blanche by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld to plan a military intervention in Iraq and secured $700
million in funds for the invasion. President Bush approved the diversion of funds
from Afghanistan appropriations, which moved the nation further towards inevitable
commitment to war in Iraq.
56
Meanwhile, former UN Weapons inspector Scott Ritter
stated plainly to the UK press that the equipment used to produce “large scale”
WMD’s had been largely destroyed and that the Prime Minister could not prove that
any weapons program had been reconstituted.
57
In the United States, Senator Dianne
Feinsten and Patrick Leahy called for congressional authorization before any use of
force, while former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn posed
the more direct question: “Can you know if they’ve acquired these weapons?.. And
can you establish that in the eyes of the world? You have to pre-empt in a way that
justifies it to our friends.”
58
The growing public pressure to prove that Iraq was an
imminent threat coupled the ongoing preparations for war meant that a forceful
defense of an attack was required.
On August 7, 2002 the Vice President unveiled a relatively straightforward
set of presumptions behind the administration’s arguments for war during a speech
given to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California. Here, he paints the
grim picture of a regional dictator armed with the resources to acquire dangerous
weapons,
He [Saddam Hussein] sits on top of 10 percent of the world's oil
reserves. He has enormous wealth being generated by that. And left to

172

his own devices, it's the judgment of many of us that in the not too
distant future he will acquire nuclear weapons. And a nuclear-armed
Saddam Hussein is not a pleasant prospect, I don't think, for anyone in
the region or for anyone in the world for that matter.”
59

Cheney argues that Iraq possessed and continued to pursue weapons of mass
destruction in opposition to UN Security Council resolution 687, which was imposed
on Iraq after the end of the first Gulf War. Rather than dwell on specific sources or
provide concrete evidence to justify his concerns, the Vice President focuses on the
consequences of the scenario he depicted. He establishes that the possibility of
Saddam Hussein acquiring nuclear weapons was in flagrant disregard to international
pressure, and concludes that anything other than regime change is likely doomed to
fail:
Sooner or later the international community is going to have to deal
with that. But, again, I think it's important for us to remember that the
transgressor here, the one who's not complied with the U.N. Security
Council resolutions, the one who's not lived up to the commitments
that were undertaken at the end of the Gulf War is Saddam Hussein.
And I think the burden ought to be on him to prove that he in fact is in
compliance. And I'm not sure at all that that's likely to happen.
60

The Vice President’s chain of deductions here is particularly revealing. In his
recapitulation of the Iraqi threat, the presumption of Saddam Hussein’s guilt is
grounded in the leader’s ethos and the history of previous transgressions. The speech
afforded no possibility for the Iraqi’s leader’s to reform or express recalcitrance. Yet,
the Vice President kept the onus on Saddam Hussein to prove the contrary. The very
nature of the regime would doom any attempt to allow Iraq to declare its guilt or
accede to the will of the UN to failure. Iraqi was thus put in a double bind, where it

173

could not prove it did not have weapons. Inspections, according to Cheney, would be
another opportunity for the Iraqi regime to deceive. “You've got to remember, he's
had about four years now to hide everything that he's been doing, and he's gotten to
be very good at that, worked at it very aggressively"
61
What was left for Cheney to
prove was not if the international community should deal with Saddam Hussein, but
when.
The emphasis on urgency in these arguments is revealing. The administration
needed to move the public past deliberation over a possible war in order to conceal
the sparse evidence behind the administration’s arguments for preventive war. This
required leveling more direct charges against Iraq. The “Downing Street memo,” a
record of discussion between UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet in July
of 2002 revealed that the U.S. was selectively utilizing intelligence data to make the
case for a war they had already decided upon. The memo stated that Saddam Hussein
“was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of
Libya, North Korea or Iran.” With the decision to go to war already made – the
administration could no longer rely on just speculation of threat. In the absence of
demonstrative evidence of threat capability, the Vice President was left to
extrapolate Saddam Hussein’s strategic ambitions and history.
The need to consolidate the administration’s position on Iraq was evident. By
August of 2002, the Vice President’s previous arguments did not reflect the possible
diplomatic solutions publicly entertained by the administration. Secretary Powell

174

was actively making the case within the administration that there was little urgency
to rush to war.
62
In retrospect, Cheney’s arguments again served as a “trial balloon”
in the face of perceived mixed messages amongst lawmakers over Iraq.
63
President
Bush, rather than directly embrace what he had secretly already approved in
February, maintained a position that all options were still available, including
diplomacy and the resumption of inspections.
64
The Vice President’s arguments
meanwhile sustained the administration’s crisis discourse and principal arguments
for the war while the President could maintain some distance until the August
controversies faded. President Bush scarcely mentioned Iraq in his August speeches
for the approaching mid-term elections, Cheney was tasked to keep the fires of war
lit.
65

The Bush administration’s rhetoric on Iraq took a dramatic turn on August
26, 2002, when Cheney delivered a speech at the 103
rd
Annual convention of the
Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville. This speech, followed by a similar speech on
August 29 to a gathering of the “Chosin Few” Veterans of the Korean War in San
Antonio, constituted the most detailed and forceful set of arguments put forth by the
administration on Iraq. George Packer’s account calls the initial speech the
beginning of a “high profile campaign” waged by the administration to establish the
necessity of action against Iraq,
66
Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that the
August 26 speech marked the beginning of Cheney’s efforts to persuade key
congressional leaders to authorize a war resolution.
67
Together these speeches were

175

described by the New York Times as providing the “administration’s most forceful
and comprehensive rationale yet for attack.”
68
They also signaled in unambiguous
terms the standard of argumentation for war up until the launch of the war in March
of 2003. Three elements of his address demonstrate the administration’s arguments.
First and foremost, the speech argued the imminence of the threat posed by
Iraq. These threats were posed as indicative of changes in the scenic calculus of
national security, with Iraq figuring prominently in this new landscape of crisis. In
the Vice President’s rhetoric, the world of international relations had changed and
Iraq represented a new kind of challenge to the security of the United States. Second,
his “evidence” constituted mainly a suspicion of Saddam Hussein’s character as a
leader that cannot be reasoned with. While the Vice President made claims that the
government knew Saddam Hussein was actively in possession of or pursuing
WMD’s, he made no overt effort substantiate those claims. Finally, the speech
concluded by detailing what was required of responsible stewards of national
security. His rhetoric reiterated the presumptions of aggressive statecraft that had
embodied Wolfowitz’s calls for “action,” noting that only through acting against
Hussein could the United States achieve real security.
The Vice President’s initial arguments rearticulate the organizing tropes of crisis
by establishing the urgency of threat and the significance of the moment. As with the
rhetoric of neoconservative foreign policy, action is predicated on the presence of an
abstract, looming threat to the nation. The Iraqi threat poised to strike at the core of

176

American existence is described as imminent. It invokes a condition of crisis that can
only be resolved through the intervention of American power:
The United States has entered a struggle of years -- a new kind of war
against a new kind of enemy...There is no doubt they wish to strike
again, and that they are working to acquire the deadliest of all
weapons. Against such enemies, America and the civilized world
have only one option: wherever terrorists operate, we must find them
where they dwell, stop them in their planning, and one by one bring
them to justice.
69

Here, Cheney constructs a “scenic crisis” with the language of civilizational conflict
– an existential war that demanded a decisive, if Manichean response. The rhetoric is
infused with the neo-conservative claim that power can and should be used to shape
the international scene.
70
The pairing of these two elements provide a powerful
narrative of an ever-present enemy that necessitates the use of American military
power.
Political scientists Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner claim that the
administration subsumed arguments about Iraq into the 9/11 issue “frame.” Cheney’s
narrative collapses the two subjects into one historical trajectory that clearly
demonstrates this rhetorical effort: “Yet the President and I never for a moment
forget our number one responsibility: to protect the American people against further
attack, and to win the war that began last September 11th…. at the same time, we
realize that wars are never won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the
enemy. We will take every step necessary to make sure our country is secure, and we
will prevail.”
71
By rhetorically signifying Iraq as a component of the 9/11 issue

177

frame, he unveils a story that make a war against Iraq a logical next phase against
those enemies symbolically linked to the perpetrators of 9/11.
Yet the Vice President’s speech was more than a set of arguments for the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein. His rhetoric was transformative in the broadest policy
sense. The threat posed by Iraq was not an isolated case – but rather endemic to a
worldview marked by liminal crisis, or crisis on the verge of transition. Cheney’s
promotion of imminence was necessary to cultivate the urgency that could displace
residual reluctance amongst policy “realists” like Scowcroft. Imminence, in other
words, propelled the “movement” aspect of Cheney’s rhetoric. Because “movement”
rhetoric challenged the discursive status quo with an alternative social imaginary, the
rhetoric of crisis provided a useful vehicle to coach this new imagination; dislodging
faith in old policy prescriptions such as “containment” or faith in sanction regimes.
Crisis fuses images of the possible with a sense of immediacy and uncertainty
that could mandate drastic action. The Vice President argues, “Were we to stop now,
any sense of security we might have would be false and temporary. There is a
terrorist underworld out there, spread among more than 60 countries….9/11 and its
aftermath awakened this nation to danger, to the true ambitions of the global terror
network, and to the reality that weapons of mass destruction are being sought by
determined enemies who would not hesitate to use them against us.” Here, his crisis
rhetoric dismisses any alternative policy course as dangerously negligent of possible

178

threats. It frames a way to imagine the entirety of the global scene, rather than
specific instances of threatening behavior.
The Vice President then dismisses the relevance of previous foreign policy
norms by arguing that new forms of imminent threat transcended the rationality of
previous policy. “Traditional” forms of deterrence simply do not work against a
dictator like Saddam Hussein or terrorists that he might supply. The apparent
imminence of crisis necessitates the Bush administration’s new policy paradigm as a
corrective to the dangers of previous policy thinking:
As we face this prospect, old doctrines of security do not apply. In the
days of the Cold War, we were able to manage the threat with
strategies of deterrence and containment. But it's a lot tougher to deter
enemies who have no country to defend. And containment is not
possible when dictators obtain weapons of mass destruction, and are
prepared to share them with terrorists who intend to inflict
catastrophic casualties on the United States.
72

It is important to note here that his unspecified nature of global threat functions as a
kind of floating signifier to attach freely to Iraq. It allows him to substitute Iraq as a
ready exemplar that justified the new “new” doctrines of national security. After
establishing the scenic calculus of threat and the necessity of the U.S. to act, he
proceeds to build the case that Iraq was the next imminent threat that must be dealt
with.
Cheney’s claim of imminence, however, required some form of evidence to
demonstrate that the Iraqi threat was real. The Vice President had hitherto relied on
speculations extracted from character judgments about Saddam Hussein, as well as

179

selective references to historical examples of Hussein’s behavior. His attempt to
establish imminence was the most controversial aspect of the speech. Cheney claims,
in retrospect falsely, that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and
it is actually pursing the development of weapons with the intent to use them against
the United States. Cheney’s arguments are posed in the most basic of terms:
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them
to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there
is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into
future confrontations with his neighbor.
73

This provocative statement is profoundly misleading. Cheney’s claims reflect
intelligence reports that were still weeks away from publication, and were not
corroborated by the findings of the October National Intelligence Estimate (or
NIE).
74
Nevertheless, the statement provides the closest thing to a strongly warranted
argument for the invasion of Iraq coming from the Bush administration as of that
moment in 2002.
Having established that Iraq did possess weapons, the Vice President was
free to elaborate a number of possible dire scenarios, bolstered by his depictions of
Hussein’s past. He does not linger on evidence (since there was little to provide), but
instead focuses on the consequences of potential attacks from Hussein’s arsenal:
“The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid
appraisal of the facts….In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each
of these agreements.”
75
Cheney’s rhetoric implies that threat could be deduced from

180

historical precedent. By settling on ethos as a presumptive indicator of motive, he
can then speculate on the consequences on Hussein’s possible actions rather than
explore the likelihood of such actions. These deductions allow the Vice President to
label the capabilities of Saddam Hussein as proof of Hussein’s elucidated motives.
Here the Vice President imagines the purpose of Saddam Hussein’s weapons:
These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are
offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive
scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of
anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.
76

Cheney’s focus on the consequences of such weapons further bolster the notion that
Saddam Hussein already possessed such weapons, and expanded the possibilities of
threat that they posed. For the Vice President, the fact that Iraq possessed WMDs
and had a history of dangerous behavior meant that compelling intelligence was a
luxury the U.S. could not entertain.
To argue this persuasively he had to diminish the process of intelligence
gathering itself (a tactic well-established in previous episodes of neo-conservative
foreign policy argument).
77
Instead of constructing a pattern of empirical evidence
against Iraq (which the CIA had already called into question), he reiterates character-
based deductions. The untidy specifics of Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities
were less important than the fundamental nature of the leader himself.
78
The Vice
President states that, “many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear
weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an
uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances.”
79
With this logic, he can also

181

mitigate arguments for further inspections. Cheney’s description of Saddam Hussein
conveys doubts over the whether inspections could reduce the threat posed by Iraq,
“…a person would be right to question any suggestion that we should just get
inspectors back into Iraq, and then our worries will be over. Saddam has perfected
the game of cheat and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception.”
80

As with his August 7
th
speech, the Vice President’s logic left little room to consider
alternatives to invasion.
Cheney’s speech proceeds to weave together a narrative of dire
consequences, which serves the rhetorical purpose of amplifying the sense of
immediacy endemic to crisis rhetoric. Unburdened from demands to prove the
presence of WMDs or establish the motivation of Saddam Hussein as an
international actor, he elaborates a dark vision where the United States does not
intervene in Iraq:
Should all his ambitions be realized, the implications would be
enormous for the Middle East, for the United States, and for the peace
of the world….. Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror,
and seated atop ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam
Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire
Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy
supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region,
and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear
blackmail.
81

The expansion of the crisis in this excerpt is significant. The threat posed by Iraq is
framed not only as a regional problem, but a significant issue affecting the United

182

States directly. Cheney’s hypothetical scenario ties the fate of the Iraq regime to the
security of the United States itself.
Having laid the charge directly at the Iraqi regime, the Vice President then
echoes the neo-conservative line of reasoning that to delay action is to invite disaster.
The Iraqi crisis demands a resolution. A simple historical analogy reinforces his
argument:
To this day, historians continue to analyze that war, speculating on
how we might have prevented Pearl Harbor, and asking what actions
might have averted the tragedies that rate among the worst in human
history.
82

With this analogy he offers a rationale to avoid dragging the United States through a
process of building international support for action against Iraq, because to open the
question of intervention to lengthy deliberation ignores the imminence of threat
posed by Iraq. “What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to
wishful thinking or willful blindness.”
83
His appeal instead depicts the Iraqi threat as
immediate and real.
Finally, the Vice President’s portrayal reveals the most basic motivation
behind the administration’s arguments for war. Though he extends some of the
transformative neoconservative arguments for war, the thrust of his rhetoric is a base
appeal to fear that mandates decisive action:
Yet if we did wait until that moment [when we were directly
confronted with security threat], Saddam would simply be
emboldened, and it would become even harder for us to gather friends
and allies to oppose him.
84

183

Cheney argues that if the United States does not take action against Iraq – it would
look weak to its enemies and its potential allies. The logic here serves two purposes.
First, it reaffirms the neo-conservative premise that the exercise of power carries
communicative value beyond its immediate application. Second, and more
importantly, it implicitly justifies the legitimacy of preventive military action to
avoid danger.
The August Cheney speeches were a defining moment in the rhetorical
campaign behind the war with Iraq. At political level, they served the practical
purpose of shielding the president from the provocative nature his administration’s
arguments for war. The Republican Party was seeking to regain control of the Senate
in the upcoming midterm elections, and the subject of Iraq was becoming
increasingly controversial. President Bush had announced a few days before the
August 26 speech that he was a “patient man” and that the United States was willing
to utilize all the “technologies available to us” in order to resolve concerns about
Iraq.
85
Cheney meanwhile was free to continue make arguments that would direct
media attention away from the President and allow Bush to define his own stance on
Iraq against the militaristic tenor of Cheney’s arguments. This would prove a
valuable arrangement for administration, as one of the first opinion polls on Iraq
showed considerable public support for war only if the U.S. had significant
international support.
86
Hedging its bets, the White House quickly responded after
Cheney’s initial speech to clarify that the decision to attack Iraq had not been made,

184

and that the Vice President was simply explaining the logic of preemption already
established by the president.
87

The Vice President’s speech was also revealing in its unabashed disregard for
an evidence-based approach to justifying war. Put another way, his speech
demonstrated a standard of evidence based not in physical measures of threat
capability, but on suspicion and presumptions of character guilt. As the journalist
Ron Suskind noted, Cheney redefined “suspicion” as “evidence.”
88
Cheney’s
advocacy demonstrated a remarkably cynical attitude towards the standards of public
deliberation, through misleading representation of existing intelligence and a heavy
reliance on crisis appeals that actively discouraged public debate. Given the nature of
his arguments, it is little surprise that it drew immediate criticism both domestically
and abroad. The press seized on the speech as a significant clarification of the
administration’s Iraq policy.
Reaction to the Vice President’s speech
The response to Cheney’s speech was swift on all sides of the debate and in
national media outlets. Prominent neo-conservative editor William Kristol declared
the speech indicated that debate within the administration over Iraq was at end.
Kristol stated that Cheney was speaking in “the voice of the president” and “this is
the beginning of the serious public campaign."
89
Senator Chuck Hagel, however,
remained unconvinced, and argued that the president “is going to have to step
forward himself and make the case."
90
David Ignatius of the Washington Post

185

observed that the speech indicated the decision to invade Iraq had effectively been
made:
Regarding Iraq itself, the noisy debate within the Bush extended
family seems to have been settled this week by Vice President
Cheney, whose speech Monday left no doubt that the president is
committed to toppling Saddam Hussein, sooner rather than later. After
his speech, even the French government was reported to have
resigned itself to the Bush administration's war planning. If Cheney's
goal was to stop the sense of drift and disorder within the Bush camp,
he probably succeeded.
91

Ignatius’s comment portrays the administration as still dealing with domestic
criticism and lingering suspicions that officials within the administration (such as
Powell) were in opposition to an Iraq war. Though Cheney’s speech may have
rebutted such criticism, it also invited a new burden on the administration – the
burden of proving its claims that Iraq was close to acquiring weapons of mass
destruction. Both domestic and foreign critics noted the administration had not
shared any evidence, per se, of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.
92
The
Vice President had deployed the rhetoric of crisis, yet the administration now faced
the prospect of demonstrating the imminent threat.
Retired general Wesley Clarke asked on national television shortly thereafter:
“Where is the sense of urgency coming from? He's had weapons of mass destruction
for 20 years… He doesn't have nuclear material, and we'd likely have some notice of
the breakdown of the containment regime."
93
Other critics speculated that the
administration’s push toward war was to reestablish momentum for the War on
Terror. Middle East analyst Stephen Cohen stated that "people out here think this

186

sense that time is running out is manufactured," and the such a war was designed to
“put energy” back into the War on Terror.
94
Abroad, European leaders claimed that a
military intervention should not be undertaken unilaterally. The Washington Post
reported that the Vice President’s remarks “alarmed” European governments and that
“France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and others warned…that a unilateral U.S.
military strike would be a violation of international norms.”
95
Meanwhile, Arab
leaders voiced fears that they would not be able to contain the “angry outburst of the
masses” if the U.S. did invade.
96

The national media, for its part, provided ample public attention to the Vice
President’s arguments. In the week following August 26 speech, Cheney’s address
received coverage in over 72 stories in major U.S. newspapers, with 25 headline
story features. These outlets focused almost universally on the most provocative of
his claims – that Iraq was in possession of WMDs and posed a significant nuclear
threat to the United States. The most common description of the speech was that
Cheney had made the administration’s ”strongest case” to attack Iraq. His claim that
Iraq would acquire nuclear weapons “fairly soon” was the most frequently cited
phrase. By stating the United States knew Iraq was bent on acquiring and using
WMDs, he captured the national media’s attention and diminished coverage of
internal squabbling amongst Republicans. Despite the attention, however, there was
scant critical focus on the logic behind the Vice President’s arguments.

187

Few papers openly questioned the lack of evidence backing up the Vice
President’s claims. Out of 72 articles that covered Cheney’s speech the following
week, only 18 touched upon the issue of evidence. Most of these articles quoted the
reactions of foreign leaders who had raised the issue of evidence. There were a few
exceptions. For example, the Boston Globe quoted Georgetown International
Relations professor Michael Hudson’s reaction to the speech:
While it sounds like a stern and categorical assertion of the
administration's claims, it doesn't provide new and plausible
corroborating evidence that Iraq does possess this kind of threat…
You have to take on faith the administration's belief that the failure to
unseat the regime will certainly lead to attacks on the US that would
be comparable or worse than what happened on Sept. 11…But
nobody has yet to make a convincing case that Saddam supports Al
Qaeda or supports terrorism against the United States.
97

Such examples of reasoned critique were scarce. The New York Times offered only
two articles raising the issue of evidence in its assessment of the Vice President’s
arguments. By end of the following week, the national press seemed more concerned
with the process of approval for military action and whether Congress should be
consulted. While the New York Times called the administration’s arguments on Iraq
“disjointed and sometimes contradictory,”
98
the Vice President had created an
opportunity for the President to define an “official” administration stance with less
bellicose rhetoric while at the same time demonstrate unified leadership on the Iraq
issue. The media seemed to await the President to “make the case himself” and put to
rest doubts that the government was divided.
99
The Vice President’s claims may
have been the “strongest yet” - they were still not definitive. During the same time-

188

frame, Secretary of State Powell continued to make statements about the possibilities
of a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
A few days after Cheney’s dismissal of UN inspections as “false comfort”,
Powell told the BBC that the United Nations must return to Iraq prior to a military
operation.
100
The Secretary offered that he agreed with the Vice President on the goal
of regime change, yet his public deviation sent the signal that the administration was
still divided. The U.S. political talk-shows quickly picked up on the dissension.
Former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke observed on Fox News that the
administration was “singing at least, at minimum, different lyrics to the same music,
and they’re undermining their case.” Lawrence Eagleburger told NBC’s Meet the
Press that there was a “disconnect” in the administration.
101

The administration moved to quell suspicions of disagreement in the policy
leadership. Bush declared that he would seek the support of Congress to authorize
military force against Iraq and distanced himself from the Vice President’s strident
rhetoric of unilateral action against Iraq.
102
On September 3, shortly after the political
talk-shows questioned the agreement between the cabinet members, Powell told
reporters that the President paid heed to “all the different insights that exist within
his cabinet" and that the administration was “working in harmony.”
103
Cheney, for
his part, went back onto the talk-shows to clarify the administration’s case.
The Vice President used the shows to first address the question of evidence
behind his claims of threat. On September 8, 2002, he states on Meet the Press that

189

“we do know, with absolute certainty, that he [Saddam Hussein] is using his
procurement program to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium
to build a nuclear weapon.”
104
He then describes the role of intelligence in the
context of the new threat environment. In this excerpt, Cheney claims that the United
States went through a more deliberate process of examining intelligence to ascertain
threat:
Well, we'll sit down and we'll evaluate the evidence. We'll draw a
conclusion." But we always think in terms that we've got all the
evidence. Here, we don't have all the evidence. We have 10 percent,
20 percent, 30 percent. We don't know how much. We know we have
a part of the picture. And that part of the picture tells us that he is, in
fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
105

His rhetoric in this instance renders specific evidence irrelevant, when the United
States was certain of the motives of the Iraqi leader and had a general sense his
ambitions. His appeal de-emphasizes the hyperventilated suggestion of imminent
threat found in his August 26 and 28 speeches and instead argues for a lower
threshold of intelligence certainty. The possibility of threat, much easier to prove
than an actual threat, was the more prudent standard by which to move against
potential enemies. If Iraq could pose a danger of high impact, then the United States
was obligated to remove the threat. President Bush was scheduled to detail the
United States position to the United Nations on September 12, and so the Vice
President retreated from the media limelight to allow the President the opportunity to
showcase a less strident, more nuanced policy of dealing with Iraq.

190

Conclusion
The Vice President’s defense of his previous speeches on Meet the Press signaled the
kind of evidence that would carry the administration’s public argument all the way
up to the war. By relying on suspicion and dwelling on threat possibility, Cheney and
other administration advocates could effectively counter demands for substantive
evidence. For them, avoiding dire consequences constituted prudent foresight and
preventive action. In the Vice President’s arguments any evidence could be
representative of a larger threat lurking behind the deception of the Iraq regime. This
kind of argument is the modus operandi of crisis rhetoric, where risk aversion invites
acceptance of authority in a time of transformation or uncertainty. Cheney’s
rhetorical tactics of crisis were echoed in Condoleezza Rice’s appearance on the
same program on September 8, 2002 where she addressed the ambiguity of
intelligence on Iraq. She uttered an infamous mix of metaphors to portray the
urgency of threat posed by Saddam Hussein:
…there will always be some uncertainty in determining how close
Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon…We don't want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
106

Rice’s comment was used by the President again in his September speech to the
U.N., becoming an ominous catchphrase for the increasingly hyperbolic arguments
of the Bush administration.
In the weeks that followed, the impact of Cheney’s arguments reverberated
across the public sphere by ratcheting up the urgency of crisis rhetoric both within

191

the government and in the writings of its neo-conservative allies. The Vice President
then receded from public exposure in September, speaking only four more times in
2002 to fundraisers and pro-military audiences. He would reemerge on the public
stage in 2003, though by that time his appearances on the national talk-shows offered
no new arguments and were overshadowed by the ongoing controversy with the UN
Security Council. Meanwhile, the administration’s rhetorical campaign pressed on
into late 2002. According to Ron Suskind, the “White House message machine
worked overtime, without any expectation of having to ever provide the underlying
evidence to support what it said.”
107
Neo-conservatives outside of government, such
as Richard Perle, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan warned their audience that
“time was running out.”
108
For George Packer, the dramatic shift in administration
rhetoric signaled an ominous turn:
It was as if the administration were working around the clock to head
off a nuclear Pearl Harbor and simultaneously prove that it was about
to happen…. The administration had boxed itself into by deciding to
go to war before it knew exactly why.
109

Packer’s historical account conveys his incredulity that the administration was able
to direct public debate over Iraq with its rhetoric and misleading representation of the
facts. In October of 2002, the U.S. Congress took up the president’s call for
authorization of force against Iraq and passed a near unanimous joint resolution
authorizing the use of force in Iraq.
110
Political scientist Chaim Kaufmann claims
that the nuclear threat was the most compelling factor behind the arguments for war,
citing polling of congresspersons involved in the resolutions authorizing force in

192

Iraq. This nuclear threat was most plainly stated by the Vice President. The repeated
invocation of threat steadily layered into public discourse by Cheney’s own
rhetorical campaign had come to dominate the deliberative body of the U.S.
government in the end. Despite the fact that no overwhelming empirical evidence
was ever presented indicating that Saddam Hussein posed in imminent threat to the
region or the United States, the United States voted to authorize a preventive war on
the grounds that the government was “fairly certain.”
111
What remained for the
administration was the task of presenting its arguments to the rest of the world. This
burden was shouldered primarily by Secretary Powell in the fall and winter of 2002-
2003.

193

Chapter 4 Endnotes

1
Dana Milbank and Claudia Dean, “Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds,”
Washington Post, September 6, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

2
“Overview of the Enemy: The Text as Submitted to the National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” quoted from MSNBC, June 16, 2004,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5224036/.

3
Linda Feldman, “The Impact of Bush linking 9/11 and Iraq,” Christian Science
Monitor, March 14, 2003, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html.

4
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11
Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3,
(2005): 525-537.

5
Information gathered from Lexis Nexis Federal News Transcript search.

6
Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its
Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 211.

7
George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss,
& Giroux, 2005), 42.

8
Ibid.

9
Stefan Halper and Jonathon Clarke, American Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and
the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 208.

10
“President Bush's State of the Union Address: Text,” Facts on File, January, 29,
2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002240050.asp.

11
“U.S. President Bush Gives State of the Union Address; War, Homeland Security
Top Agenda,” Facts on File, January 31, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002240030.asp.

12
Michael Gordon and David Sanger, “Powell Says U.S. is Weighing Ways to
Topple Hussein,” New York Times, February 13, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

194

13
Michael Gordon, “Cheney Rejects Criticism Over Allies Stand on Iraq,” New York
Times, February 16, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

14
Richard Cheney, “Remarks by the Vice President to the Council on Foreign
Relations,” February 15, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-
speeches/speeches/vp20020215.html.

15
Ibid.

16
“Enron Bankruptcy: GAO to Sue for White House Records; Other Developments,”
Facts on File, January 31, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002240120.asp.

17
Richard Cheney quoted in Eric Schmitt, “Cheney Mixes Jokes With Tough Talk,”
New York Times, February 20, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

18
Richard Cheney quoted in Dana Milbank, “Back in Public Eye, Cheney Visits
Marines;
Trip to California Kicks Off Busy Year of Political, Diplomatic Events,” Washington
Post, February 19, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

19
Michael Elliott and James Carney, “First Stop, Iraq,” CNN/insidepolitcs.com,
March 24, 2003,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/24/timep.saddam.tm/.

20
Seymour Hersh, “The Stovepipe,” The New Yorker, October 20, 2003,
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact.

21
Daniel Eisenberg, “We’re Taking Him Out,” Time, May 5, 2002,
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,235395,00.html.

22
“U.S. Vice President Cheney Tours Middle East,” Facts on File, March 5, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002244730.asp.

23
Ibid.

24
Richard Cheney, “Media Availability with British Prime Minister Tony Blair,”
March 11, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-
speeches/speeches/vp20020311.html.

195

25
Michael Gordon, “Cheney, in Jordan, Meets Opposition to Military Move in Iraq,”
New York Times, March 13, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

26
Richard Cheney, “Media Availability with Tony Blair,” CNN with Paula Zahn,
March 11, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

27
“U.S. Vice President Cheney Tours Middle East,” Facts on File, March 3, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002244730.asp.

28
Ibid.

29
Ibid.

30
See R. Lance Bennett, “Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United
States” Journal of Communication 40, no. 2 (1990): 103-25.

31
Richard Cheney, Face the Nation, March 24, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020324-
1.html.

32
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion,” 530-531.

33
Richard Cheney, interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, “Interview with Vice President
Dick Cheney,” CNN, March 24, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

34
Richard Cheney, Face the Nation, March 24
,
2002.

35
Ibid.

36
See Alan Sipress, “Cheney Plays Down Arab Criticism Over Iraq” Washington
Post, March 18, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

37
Lindsay Graham quoted in Miles Pomper, “Indecision, Disagreement’s Hamper
Bush’s Foreign Policy,” CQ Weekly, April 6, 2002: 919.

38
Ibid.

39
Ibid.

196

40
“Democrats Demand Independent Probe of Bush Administration's Handling of
Terror Warnings Before September 11 Attacks,” Facts on File, May 23, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002250470.asp.

41
David Nather, Jill Barshay and Chuck McCutcheon, “Politics Muddies the Water
Around Sept. 11 Investigation”, CQ Weekly, May 25, 2002: 1366.

42
Richard Cheney, “Interview with Vice President Dick Cheney,” Fox News Sunday,
May 19, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

43
“Democrats Demand Independent Probe of Bush Administration's Handling of
Terror Warnings Before September 11 Attacks,” Facts on File, May 23, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002250470.asp.

44
Richard Cheney, Meet the Press with Tim Russert, May 19,2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

45
Richard Cheney, interview by Larry King, CNN’s Larry King Live, May 22, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

46
Elisabeth Bumiller, “U.S. Must Act First to Battle Terror, Bush Tells Cadets,”
New York Times, June 2. 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

47
Willam Keller and Gordon Mitchell, “Preemption, Prevention,
Prevarication,” in Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed.
William Keller and Gordon Mitchell, (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press,
2006).

48
Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in
Foreign Policy (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2005), 134.

49
Miles Pomper, “Philosophical Conflicts Complicate Iraq Debate” CQ Weekly,
August 3, 2002: 2096.

50
Quoted in Eric Schmitt, “Iraq is Defiant as G.O.P. Leader Opposes Attack,” New
York Times, August 9, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

51
James A. Baker III, “The Right Way to Change a Regime,” New York Times,
August 25, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

197

52
Brent Scowcroft, Face the Nation, August 4, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

53
Brent Scowcroft, “Don’t Attack Saddam” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

54
Lawrence Eagleburger, Fox News Sunday, August 18, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

55
Howard Kurtz, “Times Takes Flak on Iraq; Conservatives Call Coverage of Bush
Policy Slanted,” Washington Post, August 21, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

56
Bob Woodward, quoted on CBS 60 Minutes, April 18, 2004,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml.

57
Scott Ritter, quoted in Tribune (UK), August 2, 2002,
http://www.tribweb.co.uk/ritter02082002.htm.

58
Miles Pomper, “Philosophical Conflicts Complicate Iraq Debate,” CQ Weekly,
August 3, 2002: 2096-2100.

59
Richard Cheney, “Remarks at the Commonwealth Club in California,” August 7,
2002. http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

60
Ibid.

61
Ibid.

62
James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, (New York: Viking, 2004), 340.

63
Martin Indyk, “A White House in Search of a Policy,” New York Times, August
11, 2002, http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/indyk/20020811.htm.

64
Christopher Marquis, “Cheney Doubts Weapons Inspections Can End Baghdad’s
Threat” New York Times, August 8, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

65
David Sanger, “As Bush Campaigns, Cheney Talks of Iraq,” New York Times, Aug
20, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

66
Packer, Assassin’s Gate, 61.

198

67
Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and
the Selling of the Iraq War, (New York: Crown, 2006), 28-29.

68
Elizabeth Bumiller and James Dao, “Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies
Attack,” New York Times, August 27, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

69
Richard Cheney, “Remarks at the 103
rd
Annual Convention of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars” August, 26, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.

70
Halper and Clarke, America Alone.

71
Richard Cheney, “Remarks at the 103
rd
Annual Convention of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars,” August, 26, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.

72
Ibid.

73
Ibid.

74
Rodger Payne, “Deliberate Before Striking First?” in Hitting First: Preventive
Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William Keller and Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg:
University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), 162.

75
Ibid.

76
Ibid.

77
Suskind, One Percent Doctrine, 168.

78
Rodger A. Payne “Deliberating Preventative War: The Strange Case of Iraq’s
Disappearing Nuclear Threat” University of Pittsburg Ridgeway Center Working
Paper (2005-2006); Gordon R. Mitchell and Robert P. Newman, “By ‘Any
Measure’ Necessary: NSC-68 and Cold War Roots of the 2002 National Security
Strategy,” in Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William
Keller and Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006).

79
Richard Cheney, “Remarks at the 103
rd
Annual Convention of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars,” August, 26, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.

199

80
Ibid.

81
Ibid.

82
Ibid.

83
Ibid.

84
Ibid.

85
“U.S. Vice President Cheney Backs Military Action to Oust Iraqi President
Hussein,” Facts on File, August 21, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002259570.asp.

86
“U.S. President Bush Vows to Seek Support From Congress, Allies on Iraq
Attack,” Facts on File, September 3, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002260160.asp.

87
Dana Milbank, “Cheney says Iraqi Strike is Justified; Hussein Poses Threat, He
Declares,” Washington Post, August 27, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

88
Suskind, One Percent Doctrine, 168.

89
Elizabeth Bumiller and James Dao, “Cheney Says Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies
Attack,” New York Times, August 27, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

90
Ibid.

91
David Ignatius, “Wilsonian Course for War” Washington Post, August 30, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

92
David Sanger, “The World: First Among Evils?; The Debate Over Iraq Heats Up,”
New York Times, September 1, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

93
Ibid.

94
Ibid.

200

95
Colum Lynch and Walter Pincus, “Iraq Calls Inspections Irrelevant; U.S. Urged to
Get U.N. Approval,” Washington Post, August 30, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

96
Eric Shmitt, “Rumsfeld Says Allies Will Support U.S. on Iraq,” New York Times,
Aug 28, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

97
John Donelley,“Cheney States Case for Action on Iraq,” Boston Globe, August 27,
2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

98
Elizabeth Bumiller and James Dao, “Cheney Says Peril of Nuclear Attack Justifies
Attack,” New York Times, August 27 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

99
Howard LaFranchi, “A Tussle Over Who Can Legally Declare War,” Christian
Science Monitor, Aug 28, 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0828/p02s02-
usmi.html.

100
Glenn Kessler, “Powell Treads Carefully on Iraq Strategy; Weapons Inspections
Urged Before action,” Washington Post, September 2, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

101
Lawrence Eagleburger, quoted in Glenn Kessler, “Powell Treads Carefully on
Iraq Strategy; Weapons Inspections Urged Before Action,” Washington Post,
September 2, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

102
Richard Oppel, Jr. and Julia Preston, “Administration Seeking to Build Support
with Congress on Iraq Issue,” New York Times, August 30, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

103
Colin Powell, quoted in “Powell Admits Lots of ‘Differences,’”
CNN.com/Insidepolitcs.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/03/powell.iraq/index.html.

104
Richard Cheney, “Vice President Dick Cheney Discusses 9/11 Anniversary, Iraq,
Nation’s Economy, and Politics 2002,” Meet the Press, September 8, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

105
Ibid.

106
Ibid.

201

107
Suskind, One Percent Doctrine, 293.

108
Packer, The Assassin’s Gate, 62.

109
Ibid.

110
“U.S. President Seeks Action on ‘Urgent’ Iraqi threat,” Facts on File, October 10,
2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002263040.asp.

111
Chaim Kauffman, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of
the War in Iraq,” International Security 29, no.1, (2004): 31.

202

Chapter 5
Colin Powell: Establishing Consensus and Legitimacy
At the end of August 2002, near the time of Vice President Cheney’s forceful
declaration of an imminent Iraqi threat, Secretary of State Colin Powell made an
equally pivotal presentation. Powell successfully convinced President Bush that the
United States should return to the United Nations and seek another round of weapons
inspections in Iraq. The New York Times reported the event as a coup for the
seemingly embattled Secretary of State. "This is a tremendous victory for Powell,"
said a Republican senator close to the Secretary. "When you look at Rumsfeld's
position and Cheney's position on going to the United Nations, there's no doubt that
Powell won."
1
By October of 2002, Secretary Powell emerged as the most prominent
voice of the Bush administration in its drive for war against Iraq.
The Secretary of State’s public entry into the chorus of administration voices
on Iraq showed that its campaign was multi-sided. The Vice President had offered a
belligerent rhetoric bent on confrontation. Had Cheney been the sole voice on Iraq,
the persona of the administration might have been cast as fixated on war. Powell
added depth, complexity, and hope to the administration’s campaign. His rhetoric
raised the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the crisis, and that the U.S. would go
to war only reluctantly. He was the public side of the administration that veered
toward peace and recruited international support. How did he do it? Why did he fail?
What lessons are to be learned about a multi-vocal administration where designated

203

spokespersons seemingly “compete” for the president’s support, the public’s
approval, and the international community’s blessing?
This chapter explores how Powell’s more “moderate” arguments sustained
the imperatives for war established by the Vice President, while deflecting criticism
leveled against the President that the administration had yet to present a case for war.
The chapter shows how the Secretary broadened the scope of support for the
President’s rhetorical movement, and ultimately returned to the same arguments
made in Cheney’s own strident calls for war. Powell’s personal credibility and status
abroad made him an ideal focal point for domestic and international scrutiny about
government’s plan for Iraq. Yet his own failure to sway fully the international
community revealed the limits of the campaign’s arguments and the fundamentally
cynical nature of the administration’s rhetorical strategy.
Secretary of State Powell took up the burdens of the administration’s public
argument on Iraq beginning in September of 2002, and his effort reached its height in
his address to the U.N. on February 5, 2003. During this campaign, the Secretary
gave 25 televised interviews, 18 speeches, and 38 “media availabilities.” Excerpts
from these discourses were selected to show how Powell afforded the administration
a voice outside the ideological appeal of Cheney and Wolfowitz. Yet, at the same
time, the discourses reveal the inherent limitations of the administration’s crisis-
laden logic as war became imminent. The chapter provides an analysis of the
February 3, 2002 U.N. address, demonstrating the administration’s final justificatory

204

statements for its plans to invade Iraq. It is organized chronologically to cover the
events and concurrent public statements made by Secretary Powell in the months
prior to the war in March of 2003:
1. Powell Ascendant: From outsider to symbol of credibility (2001 – September
2002)

2. Defining the Iraq agenda through the National Security Strategy (September
2002)

3. The Campaign for war in Congress and the United Nations (September –
November 2003)

4. U.S. Intentions are revealed (November – December 2003)

5. The “Ambush” and Powell’s retreat from diplomacy (January 2003)

6. Powell presents a “Disturbing pattern” to the Security Council (February -
March 2003)

The first section describes Powell’s position within the administration and the public
perception of his influence on emerging Iraq war plans prior to Bush’s decision to go
before the U.N., then moves to examine Powell’s personal campaign for a resolution
from the U.N. Security Council. The second section presents an analysis of Powell’s
U.N. address, which makes the administration’s most comprehensive case before an
international audience that action was necessary against Iraq. The chapter concludes
an examination of Powell’s retreat from dialogue with the U.N. and his own
capitulation to the rhetoric of crisis that had animated Cheney’s rhetoric in 2002.
Each section analyzes the structure of Powell’s arguments as they extend the
administration’s rhetorical movement for war. In particular, the analysis shows how

205

the Secretary’s strategy of framing the Iraqi threat may have effectively muted
significant domestic media criticism, yet remained ultimately unresponsive to
demands from the international community. The chapter looks for how the his
arguments targeted the diverse audiences of advisor rhetoric, by first extending
presidential claims, then adapting to the administration’s campaign to sway congress
and the international community and ultimately conforming to the positions of the
other principal advisors. The analysis begins by looking at Powell’s transformation
from a supposed minority voice within the administration, from 2001 to after
Cheney’s August 2002 speeches, to the Secretary steering the President towards
seeking international accord on action against Iraq.
Powell ascendant: from outsider to symbol of credibility
The Secretary of State’s role in the new administration began in 2001 amidst
some concern that his potential rivalry with the new Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney would overshadow the president.
2
The
popular former general entered the administration having already lost two
bureaucratic battles; his nominations for Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary
of Defense were both defeated by the Vice President’s choices. He also had drawn
negative criticism for his aversion to the use of force – a stance that ran counter to
the opinions of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
3
When Powell assumed control of the State
Department, he made it clear that the administration’s policy toward Iraq would be a

206

focused rehabilitation of the sanctions regime, and remained publicly skeptical of
military support for insurgents in Iraq.
4

The Secretary’s positions began to lose their preeminence in the wake of
what Robert Kagan called the “Rumsfeld effect,” when it became clear that the
president’s views leaned towards the muscular military policy espoused by Cheney,
Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.
5
By March of 2002, the New York Times called the
growing disagreements between Rumsfeld’s Defense Department and Powell’s
camp, “public ideological cleavages.”
6
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz was reported to
have told European diplomats in March to disregard policy statements coming from
the State Department.
7
When the Secretary told CNN anchor Kyra Phillips on
February 24, 2001 that the sanctions regime needed reworking “to relieve the burden
on the Iraqi people” and that Hussein’s regime was incapable mounting a significant
threat to its neighbors, the administration quickly clarified that the Secretary was
speaking for himself.
8
Shortly thereafter, Powell stated on March 6 that the Bush
administration was going to “pick up where President Clinton and his administration
left off” its handling of North Korea. The administration again reacted by distancing
itself from Powell’s policy arguments.
9

The Secretary’s critics on the political right stepped up their attacks on his
policy positions throughout 2001 and the news media began to focus on the
Secretary as an outsider within the administration.
10
Perhaps as a result, Powell
virtually disappeared from public view for the remainder of year.
11
Yet critical

207

attention resurfaced in 2002, and was reinforced by reporting of Powell’s policy
stumbles. The more obvious of these came in April of 2002 after Bush sent him to
the Middle East to broker a deal with the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat. The
negotiations managed by General Anthony Zinni earlier in 2002 had not produced
significant progress towards stemming violence – and Powell was given the
opportunity to restart the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
12
The
press framed his attempt less in terms of conflict resolution, but as a referendum on
Powell’s place within the foreign policy hierarchy. A May 6, 2002 article in the Wall
Street Journal ran with the headline: “Powell’s influence on Middle East debate
grows, but for how long?”
13
Powell’s April 2002 trip ended without a significant
agreement, as other voices within the administration began to speak louder about
regional transformation in the Middle East.
14

By July of 2002, press framing of the Secretary was more focused on his
institutional role and less on his foreign policy initiatives. Major newspaper articles
appeared with titles such as “the Post-Powell Doctrine” and “Embattled, Scrutinized,
Powell Soldiers On.” The media scrutiny led some to speculate Powell would not
last through the first term of the President.
15
The source of Powell’s problems was
both a clash of personalities and serious philosophical differences between him and
the more hawkish members of the administration on the subject of Iraq. While
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their neo-conservative constituencies voiced strong support
for a preventive military campaign – Powell was aligned with the those skeptical of

208

what Richard Holbrooke called a “radical break with 55 years of bipartisan transition
that sought international agreements and regimes of benefit…”
16
The Secretary was
not an idealist, but rather a pragmatic realist, who argued that the U.S. should only
act when “the cold calculus of national interest ” is threatened.
17
Yet despite
skepticism in the media and internal differences with other members of the
administration, Powell’s views on Iraq reflected the mainstream public concern that
the United States should not go to war without some sort of authorization from
Congress and the international community.
Polling in the late summer of 2002 indicated that much of the U.S. took a
cautionary stance. A considerable number of American’s wanted some sort of formal
authorization prior to an invasion of Iraq. On August 12, 2002, an ABC
News/Washington Post poll revealed that 75% of the public believed that “Bush
should get authorization from Congress before launching an attack on Iraq.”
18
On
September 4, a CNN/USA Today poll showed that 68% of the public believed the
U.S. should get a U.N. resolution before attacking Iraq.
19
Polling that began in
September of 2002 also revealed that the U.S. public largely supported a war with
Iraq. During the months leading up to the invasion in March of 2003, public support
never dipped below 55%.
20
The administration had a base of support to draw upon
for war, yet still needed to legitimize its war plans. Secretary Powell’s role was to
pursue international agreement on Iraq, in order to ensure international validation
and by doing so sustain and expand domestic public support.
21

209

At the end of July, the president’s advisors conducted a series of private
sessions recorded as “Regional Strategies Meetings” to hammer out the
administration’s strategy on Iraq. These meetings established the U.S. plans for
whether or not it would go to the U.N. or seek approval from the U.S. Congress.
22

They were kept secret, as the administration decided to wait to announce its plans
until September. As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card famously stated,
“from a marking point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
23
With
no official administration policy asserted, the advisors began to make their case
separately.
On August 5 of 2002, the Secretary of State asked the President privately to
go to the United Nations and request new inspections, with a military option reserved
for if Iraq refused to relinquish its weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
24
On
August 7, Vice President Cheney gave a speech in California stating that, “what we
know now, from various sources, is that he [Saddam Hussein] . . . continues to
pursue a nuclear weapon.”
25
Shortly thereafter, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld argued in a press conference on August 13 that further inspections would
be “very difficult” and likely too intrusive to be effective.
26
While some
administration advisors made their case for war, former foreign policy leaders from
the administration of George H.W. Bush had also come forward to proclaim that an
attack on Iraq would “jeopardize” the campaign against terror.
27
The multitude of
voices from inside and outside of the administration obscured any consensus that

210

might have been forged in the secret July meetings. President Bush refused to
comment on any particular view, but instead claimed that “it’s a healthy debate for
people to express their opinion… but America needs to know that I’ll be making up
my mind on based on the latest intelligence and how to best protect our country…”
28

What President Bush characterized as “healthy debate,” however, was beginning to
appear like serious fault-lines within the administration.
29

The divisions became starkly apparent after Vice President Cheney’s
provocative August 26
th
speech. Ten days prior to the speech, the Bush
administration had agreed to go to the U.N and seek a resolution on a new
inspections regime in Iraq.
30
The Vice President, who had initially opposed this
route, conceded that once the case was made to the United Nation it would be their
“problem,” and not the administration’s.
31
According to Bob Woodward, Secretary
Powell was “astonished” when he learned of Cheney’s speech, and considered it a
“preemptive attack” on the President’s already established policy of seeking renewed
inspections.
32
The Vice President’s words sparked concern around the world that the
United States was considering a unilateral attack on Iraq.
33
It also raised the prospect
that negotiation at the U.N. would be more difficult for Secretary Powell.
Such difficulties, however, did not appear to phase the administration’s
campaign. Nor did the perception of internal divisions among the presidential
advisors seem to concern the President. What concerned the White House was
upcoming elections and the 9/11 anniversary. Republican Senate minority leader

211

Trent Lott warned in early September that “we’re going to have to get a more
coherent message together and make sure the American people understand the
‘threat.”’
34
A CBS News/New York Times poll in early September also revealed that
64% of Americans believed the President had not clearly explained the United States
position.
35
The administration weathered these public concerns for a more politically
expedient objective. Bush’s senior political advisor Karl Rove told the New York
Times shortly before the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that “everyone thought
that was a moment that Americans wanted to hear from Bush… to seize the moment
to make clear what lies ahead.”
36
The administration moved to announce its Iraq
plans around the anniversary; amidst the context of the approaching midterm
elections. It would mark the beginning of a global campaign for action against
Hussein.
On September 4, 2002, a few days prior to the 9/11 anniversary, President
Bush invited eighteen congressional leaders to the White House to announce that he
would be seeking both congressional and international support on plans to remove
the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
37
Here, Bush publicly “chose” to side with
Powell’s position. The benefits of this move were numerous. By following the
Secretary of State’s plan, Bush avoided the fallout of Cheney’s polarizing call to
arms.
38
Bush could claim that he had selected a path that appealed to the
international community, yet did not give up the option to deal with Saddam Hussein
as necessary. While advisors claimed that Bush had not ruled out options other than

212

invasion, many congresspersons left the meeting with the impression that war was
looming.
39

At the meeting, Bush pressed the urgency of the Iraq issue and acknowledged
that the public remained uncertain, stating that “this is a debate the American people
must hear, must understand."
40
Democratic Senator Carl Levin argued that the U.S.
keep its containment policy against Iraq. Bush responded with “that’s not an option
after 9/11.”
41
The meeting revealed the difficulties faced by the opposition to define
an alternative to the administration’s urgency. Cheney’s heavily covered August 26
th

speech argued that a strike on Iraq was justified, if not inevitable, to prevent another
9/11: “If the United States could have preempted 9/11, we would have, no question.
Should we be able to prevent another, much more devastating attack, we will, no
question.”
42
On September 8, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the United States could not wait to address the Iraq crisis:
“[h]istory shows us that inaction is the problem, and the vulnerability of the United
States is really what came home very, very clearly on 9/11.”
43
Bush’s decision to go
“public” with the seeking U.N. consultation meant that the advisors could now
launch their own efforts in earnest to appropriate the imagery and urgency evoked by
the 9/11attacks.
The most obvious political benefit of the meeting was diffusing the
objections of congressional Democrats and recalcitrant Republicans. Once Bush had
announced he would go the U.N., the public bickering over unilateralism amongst

213

Republicans came to an end.
44
The Democrats, in turn, focused on the process of
making a decision on Iraq, rather than questioning the policy itself. Senator Richard
Durbin, a member of the Senate Intelligence committee, stated on September 10 that
it would be “rash and hasty” for Congress to approve any action given the little
amount of information presented. Similarly, Representative Tom Lantos cautioned
that he did “not believe the decision should be made in the frenzy of an election
year.”
45
Yet, as the Democrats pressed their criticism of the President, Republicans
charged that they had made a national security concern into a political issue during
the election season. Pollster Frank Lutz called the Democrats “too political; too
extreme” and noted that most Americans supported the removal of Saddam
Hussein.
46
The Democrats were left little room to maneuver.
While the rest of the administration talked of 9/11, the Secretary’s plan for
the U.S. was to engage the U.N. It would not only buy the U.S. more time to prepare
for war in the region (the U.S. would not have sufficient troops to mount an invasion
until late January), but would “internationalize the debate over Iraq.”
47
Instead of
domestic factional disagreement, whole nations would be the principal actors in the
Iraq debate. The solution served both the hawks’ designs and Powell’s
internationalist sensibilities. As the Secretary assumed more responsibility for the
administration’s campaign against Iraq, the nature of the rhetoric itself changed to
reflect this new venue.

214

The Secretary’s first task was to address the doubts that his plans for working
with the U.N were out of step with the administration. This meant reconciling
Cheney’s rejection of the U.N. with Powell’s own positions. On Sept 4, the same day
the President announced to congressional leaders that he would seek international
support on Iraq, the Secretary addressed Vice President Cheney’s August
comments.
48
He called those arguments “powerful” and “vivid” and that they agreed
the goal was to “eliminate Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons
programs.” He dismissed reports of disagreement as “over-hyped” and stated that the
“issue was not inspectors… the issue is disarmament.”
49
With this clarification, the
Secretary communicated that regime transformation was the shared objective of the
administration. Yet Powell also faced the prospect of defending a potentially
unilateral action. Shortly before the President was scheduled to speak to the U.N., the
Secretary speculated that there was nothing fundamentally “new” about such
policies:
Pre-emption has always been available as a tool of foreign policy or
military doctrine. Sometimes, if we can defend those interests even
before most of the world recognizes those interests are being
threatened," he said, "then I think it is a tool that should be available
to the president.
50

Powell sidestepped the issue of whether the United States would act against Iraq, and
asserted that it was within its rights to act even if other nations did not share the same
awareness of a threat. While Cheney described U.S. action in a normative sense,
Powell presented the possibility of U.S. action as a sovereign right. This distinction,

215

however, only reinforced the argumentative burden on the U.S.. The Secretary had
articulated a warrant, but had yet to make a case based on evidence that there was a
threat. The United States would still have to present a serious justification to
international and domestic audiences.
The Iraq agenda and the National Security Strategy
The process of justification to the international community began formally on
September 12, 2002, when President Bush announced to the UN General Assembly
that the regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a “grave and growing danger” and
that Iraq should “disclose and remove or destroy” any weapons of mass destruction
its possession.
51
The speech also presented an opportunity for the President to
declare for the domestic audience an Iraq policy. President Bush later told journalist
Bob Woodward that the speech served to “clarify” his Iraq policy to the American
people and “define the agenda.”
52
Speaking the day after the first anniversary of
September 11, the President declared that the crisis in Iraq stemmed from the Iraqi
regime’s growing capacity to develop and deploy WMD’s.
Bush charged that Iraq maintained, “the scientists and infrastructure for a
nuclear-weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed
to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”
53
Iraq had disregarded 16 previous U.N.
resolutions and not dismantled its stockpile of chemical and biological warheads.
Further, Hussein, had not allowed inspectors into the country since 1998. The gap
left plenty of time for Hussein to reestablish a weapons program. The president did

216

not equivocate why Iraq was in possession of WMDs: “If the Iraqi regime wishes
peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or
destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related
material."
54
These words echoed the arguments that had already been made by the
presidential advisors in the lead up to the speech. The President then equivocated
that U.S. intentions were to carry out the will of the United Nations.
To make his case, Bush leveled a challenge to the United Nations Security
Council. Bush declared that the UN was bound to enforce the previous resolutions on
Iraq:
All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and
defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and
enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations
the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant.
55

The President stated that if the U.N. did not address the growing Iraqi threat, it stood
in contradiction to its own foundational principals.
The President’s remarks here committed the United States to a course of
action that did not necessarily obviate invasion. The previous U.N. resolutions dealt
with the issue of disarmament. Bush carefully did not suggest that he intended to
remove the regime by force, even though his administration was already committed
to the principle of regime change. Instead, he stated that the intention of the United
States was “disarmament.” The President offered: “We will work with the U.N.
Security Council for the necessary resolutions.” This statement presaged the task
ahead for Secretary Powell: to argue for a new inspections regime to address the

217

threat described in Bush’s arguments. On September 12, it appeared Powell would
be committed to a diplomacy that held the glimmer of hope against war.
The day after the president’s speech, the Secretary of State explained in an
interview with CNN’s Paula Zahn that the real issue about Iraq was not inspections,
but the nature of Saddam Hussein himself and his non-compliance with U.N.
resolutions. Powell framed the option of military intervention as a solution to the
already suspicious Hussein regime:
But the issue of inspectors is not uppermost in our mind here in New
York this morning with the Security Council. It's the nature of the
indictment that's been laid before the international body on what
Saddam Hussein has been doing for the last 10 years, and to try to
achieve consensus within the Security Council on what we should do
about it and how we can put a deadline on our actions so that he
cannot continue to just walk away from these obligations and to treat
the United Nations with this kind of disrespect.
56

Here, the Secretary’s arguments aligned seamlessly with Cheney’s. Powell’s words
showed the campaign had established that actual evidence from inspections was less
important than what the U.S. already alleged to know about Saddam Hussein. Given
the make-up of international audiences, however, Powell framed the issue as an
affront to the U.N., rather than simply the security of the U.S. While the Secretary
labored to reconcile the administration’s demands, the political rhetoric on the
domestic front moved aggressively to silence political opposition at home.
The President appealed to Congress to authorize the use of force against Iraq
prior to any deliberation at the U.N. Security Council. While many lawmakers had
praised Bush’s U.N. addresses, Democratic Senator John Kerry cautioned on

218

September 12 that it would be “foolish” for the Congress to “essentially issue a
declaration of war.”
57
Yet the administration seemed intent on putting the issue to a
vote in advance of the midterm 2002 election. President Bush himself remarked, “"If
I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people--say,
vote for me, and oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to
wait for somebody else to act."
58
Days later, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and
Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers ratcheted up the urgency of
crisis in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. On September 19,
Rumsfeld declared, “no terrorist state poses a greater and more immediate
threat...than the regime of Saddam Hussein."
59
The same day, President Bush sent a
draft resolution to Congress, which argued that “anticipatory self defense” justified
the use of force to disarm Iraq.
60

The decision to seek immediate Congressional authorization accrued multiple
benefits. Polling on September 8 indicated that the American public wanted
Congressional approval on Iraq policy.
61
National Security Advisor Rice argued that
a congressional resolution would strengthen the U.S. position in negotiations with
the Security Council.
62
What form that might take was unclear. Democratic political
aide Jon Winer said a vote was a wedge-issue to divide Congressional Democrats
prior to the election.
63
As the administration continued to prime the sense of crisis, it
used the Iraq issue to criticize Democratic lawmakers. President Bush stated that the
Democrat-controlled Senate was “not interested in the security of the American

219

people."
64
Vice President Cheney, speaking at a campaign rally in Kansas on
September 23, argued that voters would be safer if a Republican were elected.
65
The
Democratic Senate Majority leader railed against politicizing the Iraq debate on
September 25, yet it appeared that the Democrats could not shift public attention
away from the urgency the administration had cultivated on Iraq.
66

While the domestic opposition struggled, the Bush administration moved to
announce formally its strategic calculus with release of the National Security
Strategy report on Sept 20, 2002. The document’s arguments and terms were a clear
signal of the new logic of United States foreign policy. In many respects, the
National Security Strategy [henceforth, NSS] statement was a condensed exposition
of arguments already circulated through much of the administration’s rhetoric in
2002 regarding Iraq,
67
signaling a larger transformation in U.S. security policy. The
key change was a shift away from a “reactive” or “defensive” posture towards one
that seeks out potential threats before they emerge.
68
The very nature of threat in the
21
st
century demanded a new kind of strategy that did not “let our enemies strike
first.” This strategy required, quite simply, a kind of U.S. hegemony grounded on the
defense of its foundational values.
69
As John Lewis Gaddis summarized the policy,
the “world, quite literally, must be made safe for democracy.”
70
The “balance of
power that favors freedom” required the preemption of potential threats with a
sweeping, aggressive foreign policy.

220

The NSS declared: “”We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to
exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively...” The document’s notion
of preemption was predicated on the interception of potential or nascent threats.
According to the NSS, the 21
st
century was defined by the presence of “emerging
threats” that were not “fully formed.” Preemption was interpreted to allow the U.S.
to act before a threat had fully manifested. Because the new threat environment
consisted of non-state actors, potentially working in tandem with rogue states who
could arm terrorists with WMDs, the very notion of imminence needed to be
reevaluated.
71
As the document stated, “We must adapt the concept of imminent
threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries." Dennis Ross, the
former State Department Director for Policy Planning notes that what the NSS called
“preemption” was in fact, “prevention,” which “lowered the threshold to military
action.”
72
As William Keller and Gordon Mitchell observe, the ambiguities behind
the NSS’s use of the term “preemption” were deliberate, as they allowed the
administration to avoid the negative connotations of “prevention” while still arguing
for a war of choice.
73

Thomas Goodnight argues that the transformation of imminence in the NSS
in particular fueled the incentive to amplify threats (even with a dearth of evidence
confirming threat).
74
This was revealed in the steady ramp-up of crisis rhetoric in
advance of the war by the administration’s spokespersons. Emphasizing imminence
also put the administration in a position to demand that the U.S.’s enemies “prove”

221

that they were, in fact, not threatening. The NSS allowed the administration an
always-already position of crisis rhetoric, which it could use to justify a preventive
use of force. To invoke imminence created crisis, and crisis demanded action:
“History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger by failed to act. In the
new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of
action.”
75
The floating urgency of crisis rhetoric was woven into the ambiguous
illustration of preemption in the NSS, setting the course for administration’s fall
campaign to promote the war.
The campaign for war in congress and the United Nations
President Bush vocalized the threats implied in the NSS to the nation shortly before
the Congress convened to vote on authorization to attack Iraq. On October 7, 2001 in
a nationally televised address estimated to have reached 17 million citizens,
President Bush claimed, “confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning
the war on terror” and that “regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of
removing a great danger to our nation."
76
He went on to detail how Iraq had
harbored terrorists who had fled from Afghanistan, and that Iraq was developing
weapons technologies and delivery vehicles that could potentially reach the United
States. Echoing a remark made by Condoleezza Rice on September 8, Bush warned,
“"We cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form
of a mushroom cloud."
77
While the language of his U.N. address seemed catered to

222

the concerns of Security Council, Bush now clarified that regime change was the
primary goal of his administration.
Bush’s speech primed the domestic political climate for the forthcoming
debates in Congress. Yet as the time for this debate approached, Secretary Powell
faced considerable opposition at the UN to the administration’s plans for a tougher
inspections regime in Iraq. France, Russia and Germany pressed the Security Council
to allow weapons inspections in Iraq to continue under the existing regime, and
resisted any resolution that triggered immediate military reprisal for Iraqi non-
compliance.
78
On September 5, Powell scored a crucial diplomatic victory for the
U.S. in the Security Council by securing the approval of U.N. chief weapons
inspector Hans Blix for a new, tough inspections regime. Blix also agreed to a key
U.S. provision – that Iraq must provide a complete disclosure of its weapons
programs.
79
The Secretary’s success came the same day as Senator Warner
announced to the U.S. Senate that “[Hussein] has to be convinced that American and
international resolve is real, unshakable and enforceable if there's to be a peaceful
resolution. But if diplomacy fails, we have to be prepared to act.,”
80
Powell’s efforts
sustained the perception of “pressure” on Iraq in the international arena, providing
further incentive for the U.S. Congress to act.
Less than a month after the release of the NSS, Congress convened to address
the issue of authorizing force in Iraq. What had the promise to be a debate on the
merits of Bush’s Iraq policy, however, turned into an exercise in political calculation

223

and capitulation. Two factors, in particular, lead the Democratic members of
Congress to forego any serious opposition to the proposed bill offered by the
President. First, the Democratic strategists figured that a quick resolution to the Iraq
debate would allow the national agenda to shift back towards domestic issues, which
they believed gave them an advantage in the upcoming election.
81
Agreeing with the
President was the best way to, as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle put it, “move
on.”
82
Second, the Democratic leadership sought a face-saving reason to go-along
with the President’s plans. Democratic Minority Leader Richard Gephardt
ultimately agreed to support the White House by stating that his party was supporting
the efforts of Secretary Powell at the U.N.
83
Powell actually told one senator that
“unless Congress passes authorization for the use of force, the Security Council will
find a way to sidestep the issue.”
84
The Secretary’s mission to represent the United
States had become a point around which the legislature could unite.
On October 10

and 11 of 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives and the
Senate formally debated the text of the resolution that would lead to the joint
“Authorization to use military force against Iraq.”
85
The administration had decided
to frame its request for authorization as a continuation of the previous 1998
resolution establishing Iraqi regime change as a policy priority; an argument
bolstered by the recent claims of WMD violations.
86
Opponents of the bill expressed
a range of concerns, including doubts that Iraq could produce nuclear weapons and
that military action could take away from the war on terrorism.
87
None of the

224

congressional opponents, however, could muster the votes to overcome the
prevailing concern over Iraq’s potential nuclear threat.
88
The authorization bill that
Congress produced highlighted many of the administration’s arguments, including
the point that members of the Al-Qaida terrorist organization were “known to be in
Iraq.” The bill asserted that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction constituted a “threat
to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in
the Persian Gulf region” and possibly to the United States itself.
89

With the passage of the joint resolutions, serious domestic opposition
amongst lawmakers effectively disappeared. The Democrat Senate Minority Leader
Tom Daschle went so far as say “it would be unfortunate if people took from that
[asking questions] that we were opposed to what the President’s doing.”
90
The
administration had successfully achieved an important objective in its larger
rhetorical campaign, and could now debate the merits of its plans with legislative
backing. As one Bush official stated, "The strategy is to use the Congress as
leverage, leverage to bring around the public, and leverage to make it clear to the
U.N. that it's not only George Bush who is prepared to draw a line in the sand, it's the
whole country."
91

Secretary Powell, however, was still forced to reconcile domestic resolve
with the skepticism of the Security Council. As the Congress voted on its
authorization for war, the Secretary faced stiff resistance to his draft resolution that
mandated military intervention if Iraq did not comply with the proposed inspections

225

regime. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder stated that both his country and
France would be “totally hostile” to a resolution that included the threat of force.
92
In
response, Powell conceded on October 10 that the U.S. would not demand a
resolution explicitly mandating the use of force against Iraq, but rather would accept
the terms “serious consequences.
93

On October 23, the U.S. submitted its revised draft proposal to the Security
Council. Other member nations had signaled their willingness to negotiate on the text
of the draft, even if they did not agree to all the language concerning consequences
for Iraqi non-compliance. Speaking about the draft on the day of its submission, U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte stated, “The moment has come to give an
added sense of urgency to this question."
94
Yet after the draft had been received, the
France, Germany, and Russia raised complaints over the phrase “serious
consequences” and whether the resolution should state that Iraq was in “material
breach” of previous resolutions. Secretary Powell expressed his frustration with the
disagreements. "We have reached a point where we have to make a few fundamental
decisions. We can't afford to have a debate that never ends." The stalled negotiations
diminished the perception that Iraq constituted an imminent crisis.
As the deliberations at the U.N. dragged on, President Bush voiced the
growing impatience of the administration. Speaking before a South Dakota campaign
rally on November 3, Bush declared, "if the U.N. won't act, if [Iraqi President]
Saddam Hussein won't disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him."
95
The

226

administration did not seemed deterred by the rise in protests against a potential war
that were sprouting up around the world, nor by the tactics of Germany, France and
Russia to make sure a resolution didn’t result in war.
96
The administration remained
adamant that any resolution coming out of the Security Council should authorize
military action against Iraq if it failed to allow new inspections and comply with the
demands to reveal any existing weapons programs. Germany had already declared
that it would abdicate from any military intervention even if a resolution would
authorize one.
97
The French and Russian foreign ministers, however, balked at the
prospect of a resolution that would automatically trigger the use of force. It was not
until after the chief weapons inspector Hans Blix told members of the Security
Council that a strong inspections regime was necessary that an agreement was
reached. Blix told the members of the Council that it had already found Iraq in
“material breach” in previous resolutions, and that he would not resume inspections
until a new resolution was passed.
98

The resolution that Powell eventually pushed through the Security Council on
November 8, 2002 was a compromise.
99
UN. Security Council Resolution 1441
would demand the resumption of weapons inspections and that Iraq provide proof
that it had ceased the development or possession of weapons of mass destruction.
The resolution effectively stated that Iraq had violated the terms of the UN
Resolution 687 that was brokered for the ceasefire of the 1991 conflict with Iraq. If
Iraq could not prove that it had violated the terms of this resolution (and other

227

previous agreements regarding weapons development and possession), then it could
be declared in “material breach.”
100
Powell’s only significant concession came in the
wording. “Serious consequences” for Iraq could only be authorized if Iraq failed to
comply with the demands of the Council and the Council found Iraq to be in
“material breach.”
101
Nevertheless, it was a symbolic victory for the administration
amidst an increasingly skeptical international community.
The passage of Resolution 1441 represented the success of the Secretary’s
own rhetoric of crisis. Powell had adapted the overall campaign of crisis rhetoric
around the issue of resolution violations, and codified the imminence of threat posed
by Iraq and the necessity of action in an international, binding document. It was
hailed as a significant victory for Powell and the process of diplomacy as well.
102
For
a brief moment, commentators entertained the possibility that the successful passage
of this resolution could avert a war in Iraq.
103
This interpretation, however, ignored
Powell’s own rhetoric on the subject of Saddam Hussein. While Powell was
determined to go through the process of acquiring international approval for the
removal of Saddam – the issue of inspections were never considered the final
objective in his arguments. In a November 10 CNN interview shortly after the
passage of 1441, Powell distinguished the U.S. position from the U.N.’s, “We think
that the people of Iraq would be better off, the region would be better off and the
world would be better off if Saddam Hussein was no longer in power.”
104
Powell
was still a part of an administration that had secretly made the decision to go to war,

228

and arguments would still have to be made to justify the U.S. launching an
intervention beyond the sanction of the U.N.
U.S. intentions are revealed
The Secretary of State, as well as the rest of the administration, wasted little
opportunity clarify the terms of the resolution to the American people in manner that
justified military intervention. On the November 10 Face the Nation, just one day
after the resolution was passed, Powell’s rhetoric suggested the administration
interpreted the resolution to give tremendous latitude to the United States on Iraq. He
discusses here the first stipulation of the resolution - the declaration of weapons
programs and stockpiles:
The resolution says that if the declaration is false and if they're not
complying--and if the declaration is false, they're not complying, then
that constitutes, in and of itself, the very fact of that non-compliance,
is a material breach under the terms of the resolution. At which point,
this material breach is reported to the council for the council to decide
what to do. And at that point the United States will participate in the
council discussions but also retains the ultimate right, if it chooses to
do so at some point, to take action separately from the council if the
council does not act.
105

Powell’s statement declares that the United States could itself interpret whether Iraq
was in material breach, and act regardless of international consensus on whether
there was a “material breach.” This interpretation appeared at odds with the actual
wording of the resolution, yet sustained the administration’s public stance that it
would be constrained by multilateral arrangements. The Secretary’s words betrayed
the strategic, if not cynical, separate angles of the administration’s campaign. As

229

Douglas Foyle noted, “the public relations effort emphasized different arguments for
different actors.”
106
The domestic arguments stressed the dangers of the Iraqi regime
and relationship with terrorists. For the UN, resolutions and Iraq’s respect for
international institutions were the administrations main arguments. This allowed a
temporary reprieve between the United States and other nation’s skeptical of its
intentions for Iraq. Yet as the world bore witness to the U.S. reaction to Iraq’s
attempt at compliance, it became clear that the U.S. never seriously entertained the
option of coercive diplomacy. Secretary Powell’s words revealed a more accurate
picture of U.S. intentions as the planned March invasion drew closer.
Shortly after the passage of the U.N. resolution, the Secretary still had to
maintain the perception that inspections were part of the administration’s designs and
that the United States had not effectively decided to go war. While Powell demurred
from such speculation on the November 10 Face the Nation, he acknowledged his
own views on inspections to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that same day. Blitzer asks Powell
if his position contradicted the Vice President’s speech in August that dismissed
inspections. The Secretary’s response shows little obvious dissension:
He's absolutely right, I agree with him. The return of the inspectors in
and of themselves won't lead to disarmament in the face of an
uncooperative attitude on the part of the Iraqis. What makes it
different this time is that if they display that uncooperative attitude, if
they are cheating and deceiving and doing all those things to prevent
the inspectors from doing their job, then they're going to face the most
serious consequences.
107

230

The tacit message behind Powell’s rhetoric, as with Cheney’s, is that Iraq was
already “cheating” and “deceiving.” Yet the Secretary’s U.N. gambit to reconcile
regime change with inspections only reinforced the burden of proof that engaging the
U.N. had forced upon the administration.
On November 20, while the world waited on Iraq’s declaration of its weapons
programs, he tells Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News that:
If he [Hussein] cooperates in a way that's clear and visible, and we
can let the inspectors do their job, then war can be avoided. But if the
declaration is patently false and everybody can see it, if he does not
let the inspectors do their job, then the president is fully ready to take
the necessary step, which is military force.

The emphasis in this passage is added to highlight the burden previously mentioned.
Given the administration’s stated goal of regime change, there was little room for
him to argue that successful inspections in themselves could themselves constitute
regime change. Powell floats this notion briefly in a November 28 interview on
National Public Radio, but by December it appeared that he was determined to
debunk any claims that Iraq had complied with the terms of 144.
108

Between November 27 and December 5 of 2002, UN weapons inspectors
returned to Iraq to search for signs that Iraq was developing weapons of mass
destruction. The teams reported of scant evidence of significant violations, yet
President Bush declared on December 2 that signs were “not encouraging” that
Saddam Hussein “decided to cooperate willingly and comply completely.”
109
Despite
U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan’s remark that Iraq’s cooperation “appears to be

231

good,” Bush warned that “any act of delay, deception or defiance will prove that
Saddam Hussein has rejected the path of peace.”
110
On December 7, 2002, Iraq
submitted to the United Nations a 12,200 page report declaring the status of its
weapons programs and stockpiles.
On December 19, Powell responded in a news conference with a harsh
dismissal of the report, noting that “we are disappointed, but we are not deceived.”
Powell argues that “most brazenly of all, the Iraqi declaration denies the existence of
any prohibited weapons programs.”
111
Powell characterizes the report as consistent
the already established narrative of Saddam Hussein’s suspicious credibility, “We
have seen this game again and again – an attempt to sow confusion, buy time, and
hoping the world will lose interest. This time the game is not working.”
112
Powell’s
words were timed with the massive movement of troops to the Middle East. By the
end of December, the United States had amassed over 250,00 troops in the
region.
113
It had became clear that the United States would not judge any
communication from the Iraqi regime as credible. Despite Powell’s rhetoric of
multilateral engagement, the motivations of the administration were now decidedly
transparent to the international community.
The “Ambush” and the retreat from diplomacy
Perhaps not surprisingly, the members of the Security Council who had helped
Powell broker resolution 1441 made a very public departure from the solidarity of
November 8.
114
In response, Powell’s rhetoric changed dramatically after the

232

statements of the French ambassador Dominique de Villepin revealed the breakdown
of international consensus over Iraq. On January 20 of 2003, in what became known
as the “ambush,” de Villepin announced at a press conference that “we believe
nothing justifies military invention.”
115
The French had effectively declared they
would veto any further UN resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.
Officials at the State Department noted that Powell was “struck dumb and stupid.”
116

In one statement, the French and their allies had effectively undercut Powell’s
influence within the administration and closed off avenues for further deliberation.
Powell was now free to tailor his rhetoric on Iraq to the logic of Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Wolfowitz.
A few days after the “ambush,” Powell’s rhetorical persona changed. At the
meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 27, Powell answered
back to his critics in the international community by declaring the right and
obligation of the United States to defend itself. “'When we feel strongly about
something, we will lead. We will act even if other are not prepared to join us';
'multilateralism cannot become an excuse for inaction”
117
Rather than justify the U.S.
position on the grounds of evidence of Iraqi threat, Powell shifts the onus of the
crisis squarely onto the Iraqi regime. “This is not about inspectors finding smoking
guns. It is about Iraqis' failure -- Iraq's failure -- to tell the inspectors where to find its
weapons of mass destruction.”
118
Powell effectively announces here that the time for
inspections was drawing to a close. “Iraq's time for choosing peaceful disarmament

233

is fast coming to an end.”
119
Shortly after this appearance, the President clarified for
the nation the final task for Secretary Powell in the campaign for war.
In Bush’s January 28 State of the Union address, the president announced
that Powell would go before the UN Security Council and ask its members to
“consider the facts of Iraq’s ongoing defiance of the world.”
120
The stage had been set
for Powell’s definitive presentation of the administration’s arguments. The President
had spent little time campaigning for the war prior to his address. Up until the time
of the “ambush” in late January, it still appeared that the rest of the Security Council
was in accord with the United States on the issue of disarmament despite some
friction over whether more inspections were necessary to confirm “non-compliance.”
In a January 14 press conference with the Polish President, Bush closed his
conference with a brief summation of his administration’s views:
Is Saddam Hussein disarming? He's been given 11 years to disarm.
And so the world came together and we have given him one last
chance to disarm. So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is
disarming. Time is running out on Saddam Hussein. He must disarm.
I'm sick and tired of games and deception. And that's my view of
timetables.
121

Rather than focus on Iraq, the majority of the President’s speeches concerned
domestic economic issues. The tenor of the campaign changed, however, after a
pivotal visit by French President Chirac to Washington in mid-January. National
Security Advisor Rice told the French president that the only acceptable means of
Iraqi disarmament was regime change – the removal of Saddam Hussein.
122

234

Positions in the Security Council began to diverge. As it became clear that
other members of the Security Council seriously doubted that Iraq’s 12,000 page
weapons declaration was a “material breach,” National Security Advisor Rice
published an op-ed in the New York Times characterizing Iraq’s behavior as a
“farcical shell game… By both its actions and its inactions, Iraq is proving not that it
is a nation bent on disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide.”
123

Rice’s comments, however, did not fully reflect the early results weapons inspectors
who had found no conclusive evidence that Iraq still possessed banned weapons. On
January 28, Powell announced that he would use his address to Security Council to
present classified U.S. intelligence that would prove Iraqi non-compliance with the
U.N.
124

The U.S. media, in the meantime, appeared inclined to adhere to the
administration’s claims about Iraq. As the Secretary of State prepared for his final
arguments before the UN Security Council on February 5, various editorials around
the United States concluded that Iraq was a threat that required military intervention.
Regional papers from around the country revealed that the administration’s rhetorical
campaign had fundamental constrained the debate over Iraq.
125
Still some regional
editorials reflected at least a still partially divided American public. According to
political scientists Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, it would take Powell’s
February 5 speech to the UN Security council to provide the most compelling
package of evidence and catalyze broad domestic support for the administration’s

235

assessment of the Iraq.
126
Powell’s efforts would infuse the “movement” rhetoric of
the Bush’s Iraq campaign with the appearance of international legitimacy, while
bringing its fundamental logic of crisis reasoning to bear upon the court of
international opinion.
Powell presents a “disturbing pattern”
On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell, accompanied by the Director of the CIA
William Tenet, presented a series of arguments to the United Nations Security
Council justifying the threat posed by Iraq to the international community. This
would later be described as his “Adlai Stevenson Moment,” where Powell was
forced to present to the UN Security Council “incontrovertible” evidence to justify
the use of force against Iraq.
127
Powell’s arguments built the case for an additional
resolution to recognize that Iraq was in “material breach” of the previous resolution
mandating Iraq demonstrate that it had abandoned its weapons production
programs.
128

At the time of the Secretary’s speech, opposition remained both domestically
and in the Security Council against a military intervention in Iraq. Russia and France,
both responding to considerable domestic political pressures, made very public
intimations that they would veto any further resolutions presented by the United
States or the United Kingdom that would authorize the use of force against Iraq.
129
In
the United States, approval of the President’s Iraq policy had fallen to 50%
according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll. The same poll showed that 48% of

236

the American public felt that President Bush had not explained why the United States
should go to war with Iraq.
130
Despite these numbers, the administration was
counting on Powell to present a persuasive case, weaving together the web of
classified satellite observations and communication intercepts between Iraqi officers
on “nerve agents” it had received in December.
131

The administration viewed that the Secretary’s presentation was crucial in its
campaign for war – more so even than the President’s own arguments. The White
House Senior Communications Director Dan Bartlett remarked that the President’s
2003 State of Union was “not the appropriate forum” to unveil the evidence that
Powell would present to the U.N.
132
Instead, the administration was banking on the
wide level of popularly that the Secretary enjoyed both in the U.S. and abroad. As
“senior administration official” admitted, “the bottom line is, he's a strategic
asset.”
133
Powell went to the U.N. not to reiterate vague speculations and deductions
of Saddam Hussein’s ethos that had characterized much of the previous domestic
arguments about Iraq, but to offer the closest thing to an evidence-based argument
justifying the Iraqi crisis.
The Secretary begins his speech with a contextualization of the scene as one
of crisis, declaring “the gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat
that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world.”
134
After establishing the
urgency of the venue, Powell moves to clarify that his presentation as not meant to
conflict with the previous reports of U.N. weapons inspectors, but to augment them

237

with what the “United States knows about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as well
as Iraq's involvement in terrorism.”
135

Secretary Powell then declares that Iraq was non-compliant with the demands
of the resolution imposed on it by the United Nations in U.N. resolution 1441, the
capstone of a lengthy history of disregard for the Security Council’s edicts. “Iraq had
already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over
16 previous resolutions and 12 years.”
136
Here, Powell reconstructs the historical
narrative of Saddam Hussein’s actions, in order to further the claim that Saddam had,
in fact, violated the previous UN resolution. It is also the first indication that
Powell’s arguments are not simply catering to the international venue (as his
previous tactics in October of 2002 seemed to indicate), but are based on the
administration’s preferred interpretation of Iraqi actions as constituting a “disturbing
pattern of behavior.”
137

The Secretary’s arguments unfold a history of Iraqi abrogation coupled with
circumstantial evidence that describe “an accumulation of facts.” His evidence-based
arguments are more numerous than directly incriminating. Powell details the web of
evidence by first claiming that Iraq had engaged in a “deliberate campaign to prevent
any meaningful inspection work.” To support this claim, Powell notes that an array
of satellite imagery and intercepted radio transmissions seemed to confirm that Iraq
had attempted to conceal something from weapons inspectors back in late 2002.
Powell uses a lengthy Powerpoint presentation to point out reconnaissance photos

238

suggesting the presence of mobile weapons laboratories. He also notes that Iraq’s
declared figures on its previous weapons stockpiles do not corroborate previous U.S.
intelligence.
138

By themselves, these observations did not appear to warrant a massive
military intervention. Therefore, Powell returns to the deductive logic characteristic
of the administration’s rhetorical campaign throughout 2002, in order to stitch
together a “pattern of behavior” that revealed guilt:
The facts on Iraqis' behavior--Iraq's behavior demonstrates that
Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort--no effort--to
disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts
and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are
concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass
destruction...
139

Here the Secretary presents an extrapolation of the weapons that Iraq could possess if
contemporary intelligence proves to be correct. This dovetails into speculation of
what would happen if the U.N. did not piece together Iraq’s motivations with the
array of intelligence at hand.
Powell’s “worst-case” scenario logic betrays a lack of direct evidence of
“material breach.” He asserts that just because the United States had no proof that
Iraq possessed WMD’s, does not mean the Iraqi’s do not possess them. The logic
becomes circular:
Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein
to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of
territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan...We have no
indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear

239

weapons program. On the contrary, we have more than a decade of
proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons...
140

The Secretary attempts here to appeal to the established sense of narrative
probability around Iraq’s constructed persona. Iraq’s history of transgression invites
the conclusion that Powell’s circumstantial evidence actually confirms the arc of the
nation’s path towards villainy.
141
Powell reserves the most devastating of his claims,
however, for his linkage of the Iraqi regime to the terrorist network Al-Qaida.
The connection of Al-Qaida to Iraq was hardly new in the administration’s
rhetoric by February of 2003. Both Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld had repeatedly made reference to possibility of a “marriage” between the
two entities. In September of 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld declared there was
“bulletproof” evidence of collaboration between Iraq and the terrorist group.
142

Secretary Powell’s capitulation to this claim in his speech signals that the U.S public
is equally as crucial an audience as the international community. He makes the
specific claim that Iraq is harboring known Al-Qaida member Abu Musab Al-
Zarqawi. Here, he speculates how Iraq could unite with Al-Qaida under the general
goal of “tyranny”:
Some believe, some claim these contacts do not amount to much.
They say Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and Al Qaeda's religious
tyranny do not mix. I am not comforted by this thought. Ambition and
hatred are enough to bring Iraq and Al Qaeda together...
143

The Secretary’s construction of this hypothetical scenario draws from the misleading
(and later demonstratively false) claims that Iraq had a working relationship with the

240

Al-Qaida terrorist organization. Powell asserts this, despite the reservations of the
intelligence community that had been voiced in the classified October NIE of
2002.
144

While the speech was promoted as a showcase for the administration’s
evidence against the Hussein regime, Powell’s arguments ultimately settle on the
consequences of ignoring the Iraqi threat rather than establishing clear empirical
claims. Despite the circumstantial “pattern” of Iraqi behavior demonstrating Iraqi
“non-compliance,” the Secretary closes with an appeal to a sense of crisis, embedded
in the rhetoric of 9/11, in order to facilitate action:
Should we take the risk that he will not someday use [WMD] at a
time and a place and in a manner of his choosing? . . . The United
States will not and cannot run that risk for the American people.
Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass
destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a
post–September 11th world’
145

This excerpt reveals the Secretary’s speech to be less of a means to rehabilitate the
process of international deliberation and coalition building, than a justification for
the United States’ own strategic imperatives. The United States was going to war,
and the speech served as a reminder to world that that the United States was
confident in its own justifications.
Reaction to the Secretary’s speech
Powell’s speech finalized, in many respects the various strands of argument that had
made up the administration’s case for war. It was not sufficient for the administration
simply to claim that Iraq could possibly pose a threat and the U.S. was obligated to

241

act decisively. The speech served the vital purpose of galvanizing U.S. public
opinion about the impending conflict. Gershkoff and Kushner’s tracking of President
Bush’s rhetoric prior to the war note that it was Powell’s speech, more than the
President’s, that was instrumental in building support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
More significantly, their findings reveal that his speech significantly contributed to
the belief that Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaida were connected. They observe that
Powell’s speech created a 30 point jump in the percentage of Americans believing
Iraq and Al-Qaida were connected.
146
Ten percent of Americans viewing the speech
actually changed their mind about supporting a war after viewing the speech.
147
This
reaction was not limited to the general public. The mainstream media mounted
virtually no significant criticism of the impending conflict after the speech.
According to a study by the journal Editor & Publisher, “daily newspapers in
their editorials dramatically shifted their views to support the Bush administration’s
hard-line stance on Iraq” starting the day after Powell’s speech.
148
The New York
Times described the Powell’s sophisticated array of circumstantial evidence a
rhetorical version of the “Powell doctrine,” designed to shower his audience with
“overwhelming” information.
149
A New York Times editorial the following day
praised Powell for his arguments:
Mr. Powell's presentation was all the more convincing because he
dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil
and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein's
regime. It may not have produced a "smoking gun," but it left little
question that Mr. Hussein had tried hard to conceal one.
150

242

The New York Times acknowledged the sobriety of Powell’s reasoning after a
lengthy campaign of drama-laden crisis rhetoric. The Washington Post heaped even
more praise on the Secretary’s arguments:
The world witnessed one of this country's most respected public
figures, a highly decorated former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and skilled diplomat, deliver a devastating indictment of a
regime that has, in violation of U.N. resolutions, continued to harbor
and manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
151

Other critics of the administration’s Iraq policy admitted that Powell’s performance
alone was worthy of acknowledgement. For example, William Raspberry declared in
the Washington Post that he was “complete convert” to Powell, if not the “Bush
administration’s rationale” for war.
152
As for the impending war itself, the normally
critical New York Times appeared to concur with the administration’s
characterizations. In the wake of Powell’s speech, the New York Times editorial staff
saw few alternatives to war.
Mr. Hussein is a cagey despot, and he is certain to use the coming
week to make a dramatic concession or two. But Hans Blix, the chief
inspector for chemical and biological weapons, has demonstrated a
stern resistance to eyewash, and the Security Council seems to be
tiring of Mr. Hussein's antics. Coercive diplomacy has its limits -- it
didn't budge Mr. Hussein from Kuwait a decade ago.
153

The national papers of record were not the only voices to fall in line behind the
administration after Powell’s speech. The members of the Democratic opposition
also sounded their own accord.
The traditionally partisan opponents of the president’s policies sounded
voices of assent. Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, who had voted for the use of

243

force in October of 2002 announced that she summarily convinced. She stated that
Powell “laid out the most comprehensive and to a great extent compelling case that
has been made, either in a classified or unclassified setting.” Feinstein also accepted
Powell’s links between Iraq and international terrorism. "For the first time, he drew a
nexus between Al Qaeda and Baghdad.”
154
Reaction in the international community,
however, was less than sympathetic.
Foreign leaders, such as French president Jacques Chirac were quick to assert
that despite Powell’s arguments, war with Iraq was not inevitable.
155
Others directly
criticized Powell’s arguments. Igor S. Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister, stated that
the speech "revealed no persuasive proof that weapons of mass production have been
produced in Iraq… there are no grounds to resort to this [force] in Iraq
whatsoever."
156
The international press, in particular, was critical of the arguments
provided by Powell in his speech.
An editorial in Le Monde offered that, “We were waiting for the ‘day of
evidence,’ but it ended up being the "day of reiterated suspicions." Italy’s La
Republica sounded a similar complaint, noting that Powell’s “evidence convinced
those who already were convinced, without really converting the skeptics.” Russia’s
Vremya Novostei was also skeptical, “Powell was eloquent but not entirely
convincing… [his] arguments for the military operation code-named Shock and
Quiver seem weak at first sight.”
157
These foreign editorials predicted future
difficulties with the Security Council, as Powell continued to symbolize the

244

administration’s rhetorical campaign. Yet they did not deter the administration’s
attempt to capitalize on his address.
Soon after the February 5 speech to the U.N., the White House mobilized a
cadre of presidential advisors to make appearances on national media outlets. The
intent was to capitalize on any momentum that the Secretary’s speech might have
generated in public opinion on the war. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Deputy
Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, and National Security Advisor Rice all made
appearances on national television in the week following Powell’s speech. White
House Senior Communications Director Dan Bartlett clarified the administration’s
strategy at this point: “We knew there was going to have to be a steady escalation of
public appearances and speeches and comments about the nature of the
threat."
158
Such concern was understandable. A Washington Post/ABC News poll
taken between February 6 and 9 indicated that while support for the war had risen to
66% overall, that figure dropped to 50% if the U.S. decided invaded without
international approval.
159
During the same time period, Germany, France and
Belgium had vetoed any assistance from the NATO alliance, and the German and
French foreign minister’s rebuked Secretary Rumsfeld at a conference in Munich. It
became obvious that the campaign of persuasion would shift exclusively to the
domestic audience.
As the war approached, it became increasingly apparent that Secretary Powell
had abandoned any pretense of presenting a “moderate” face for the administration

245

with the collapse of international comity.
160
Powell’s difficulties with the UN were
evident in an interview with Fox News’s Tony Snow on February 9, 2003. Here,
Powell responds to Snow’s query about the UN’s role:
We've had more than enough time to measure Iraqi compliance, and
all we've seen is noncompliance. I hope that the U.N. will not slip into
irrelevance by failing to step up to its responsibilities at this moment
in history.
161

Not surprisingly, Fox News’s coverage provided scant critical inquiries into
the administration’s arguments for war, and instead directed its attacks on the
UN. By February of 2003, most critical coverage of the war in the U.S. media
had disappeared outside of the Sunday talk shows and the press in general.
162

George Stephanopoulos, on his show ABC This Week, attempted on
two occasions to probe the Secretary on the possibility that the U.S. might
avert war by working with the U.N. on revised inspections regime. Powell’s
response dismisses this possibility:
The issue is not more inspectors or more robust inspections, the issue
is will Iraq comply? Will it give up its weapons of mass destruction?
The resolution that we're trying to execute, 1441, accepted as a fact
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
163

His answer effectively shuts out any credible alternative to dealing with the Iraqi
regime other than invasion. In the same interview, he warns the television audience
that despite the impending action against Iraq, the threat of potential radiological
attack from Al-Qaida was very real for the U.S. Here he shifts seamlessly between
addressing the likelihood of a terrorist attack and justifications for war in Iraq:

246

How likely it is, I can't say. But I think it is wise for us to at least let the
American people know of this possibility…We can't ignore danger. We can't
turn away from this challenge. This challenge has been with us now for 12
long years, and it's time to resolve this challenge once and for all. It's time to
do something about this regime that has been developing weapons of mass
destruction…
164

Powell’s arguments here begin to rival the Vice President’s alarmist
prognostications. They demonstrate that even in the waning weeks before the
invasion, the Bush administration was determined to sustain it’s rhetorical campaign
in the face of potential criticism.
Domestic criticism, however, remained tentative up until the war. The New
York Times eventually managed to assail Powell’s assertion that there were
significant links between Al-Qaida and Iraq, calling his case an “assemblage of
ambiguous clues,” yet did not aggressively call for a reconsideration of the
impending war.
165
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post questioned Powell’s
credibility as a moderate voice in his criticism of Powell’s speech, “in fact, to be
perfectly frank, sir, parts of your presentation to the United Nations seem, in
retrospect, to have overstated the case.” While Cohen suggested that the Bush
administration had “tickled the facts,” he did not question whether the Iraqi regime
was worth preserving.
166
The sense of threat the administration had managed to
inculcate seemed to have dampened the impulse to critical journalism.
The international community, however, continued to put pressure on the
United States to pull back from its bellicose position. On February 15, protests were
held in over 350 cities around the world against military action in Iraq. The chief

247

U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, stated on February 14 that the Iraqi regime had
been largely compliant with the U.N. inspection teams, and he dismissed Powell’s
claims that Iraq had hidden mobile weapons labs.
167
Powell maintained after Blix
delivered his inspections report on February 20 that the U.S. had additional evidence
indicating Iraq was not in compliance with U.N. resolutions.
168

Despite the apparent logical bind of whether or not Saddam could prove his
compliance with UN resolution 1441, the Secretary continued to assert that the
possibility of Iraqi hiding weapons alone constituted a sufficient reason to consider
the nation a threat. In this March 9 interview on Fox News with Tony Snow, Powell
uses the lack of evidence as a mark of suspicion:
If Saddam Hussein was really intent on complying with the
resolutions, I think he would be bringing forward evidence, he would
be bringing forward all of these programs, he would be bringing
forward weapons. We wouldn't be searching for them. We wouldn't
be tripping over them.
169

Under Powell’s logic, if Saddam Hussein had indeed shown weapons to UN
inspectors, it would have demonstrated its violation of previous resolutions. For the
Secretary (as had been the case for the Vice President), suspicion alone constituted
sufficient warrant for action. Such logic, however, failed to sway other members of
the Security Council to pass a second resolution explicitly authorizing the use of
force. The foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Russia stated on March 6 that
they would block such an effort.
170
Powell’s rhetorical campaign at the United
Nations had effectively come to an end.

248

On March 5, two weeks before the U.S. would launch it’s invasion of Iraq,
Secretary Powell made a public appeal to the American public to cast doubt on the
reports of the inspectors sent to Iraq under the terms of the last resolution. Speaking
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he argues that Saddam Hussein
had not complied with the terms of resolution 1441, and therefore proved himself to
be threat constructed in the rhetoric of the Bush administration:
Had he [Hussein] made a strategic, political decision to get rid of his
weapons of mass destruction? That's it in a nutshell….Consider what
could happen if Saddam Hussein, a tyrant who has no scruples and no
mercies, concludes that the governments of the world will not
condone military action under any circumstances . . . a terrible
message will go far and wide to all those who conspire to do harm, to
all those who seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
171

Powell’s critique encapsulates the argument moves that had sustained the Bush
administration’s rhetorical campaign. First, it dismisses the possibility of evidence
that could mitigate the government’s claims. Second, it appeals to the urgency of
threat represented in the unchecked character of Saddam Hussein’s regime. As the
time for invasion drew near, Powell fell back upon the recurrent script of the
campaign. With the nation’s media diverting public attention to the impending
spectacle of war, neither the administration nor the Secretary in particular saw fit to
engage in any rigorous or new defense of its positions. On March 19, 2003, the
rhetorical campaign for war in Iraq had ended with the bombing of Baghdad.

249

Conclusion
By the time hostilities began in Iraq, Powell had revealed himself as the
central figure in the final stages of the administration’s argument strategy for war.
He also showed that his separation from the larger rhetorical strategy of the
campaign was short-lived, as the Secretary gradually assumed arguments burdens
crucial to the administration’s rhetorical movement. Powell publicly entered into the
campaign marked as an “outsider” amidst a Cabinet of hawks. Early criticism of his
outsider positions gave way to the Secretary extending the arguments of the
President after the decision to go to the UN was made in August of 2002. James
Mann asserts that Powell’s views never strayed far from the neo-conservative
transformationalists like Wolfowitz, yet his rhetoric tells a different story. It reveals a
rhetoric adapting to the needs of the venue and the demands of the administration.
In 2001, the Secretary asserted the effective “containment” of Iraq was
working. This position initially afforded him the credibility to make arguments
targeted toward both domestic and international constituencies. Powell’s efforts
provided a context to the congressional debates of October 2002 that at heightened
the urgency of action while retaining a sense that the U.S. was engaged in
multilateral due diligence. Even during his early efforts to secure UN resolutions
against Iraq in September of 2002, he framed his arguments as upholding the sanctity
of international regimes. But the vocabulary and logic of the movement’s arguments
left little room to reconcile multilateralism with the imminence of crisis. The

250

Secretary’s “ambush” at the hands of France and Russia in the Security Council and
the lack of allies within the administration speeded his public conversion to the Vice
President’s crisis-laden arguments for war. His February address is a testimony to
this transformation. As the polls in February of 2003 indicated Powell’s U.N. address
was instrumental in cementing the domestic legitimacy Bush needed to expedite the
war. While his rhetoric ultimately failed to galvanize a global coalition against
Saddam Hussein, the mixture of the administration’s entrenched crisis rhetoric with
the Secretary’s established credentials as a rational, moderate influence on the
President may have been the defining element of the administration’s campaign.
Powell’s prewar rhetoric revealed, in many ways, how a presidential advisor
may be crucial to the over-arching objectives of an administration’s rhetorical
campaign. The Secretary of State bestowed a kind of legitimacy that drew from his
established history as a seasoned general in the first Gulf War, and also the sense that
Powell was not in the service of any ideological mission in foreign policy. He was a
holdover from the pragmatic realism of the first Bush administration. His public
conversion to the neo-conservative talking points of Wolfowitz and Cheney
communicated that the threats they articulated were real and imminent.
Yet the administration’s reliance on the Secretary betrayed the
“manufactured” nature of the rhetorical campaign. Theodore Windt observes such
persuasive campaigns based on crisis rhetoric are often divorced from actual
threats.
172
Rather, the threats themselves are rhetorically built up. The staged nature

251

of the campaign, which was planned to include the incremental release of classified
intelligence data as “several Cuban Missile Crisis moments” was profoundly
cynical.
173
By the time Powell had became the centerpiece of the administration’s
rhetorical campaign in February of 2002, it was clear that the war had ceased to be a
matter of deliberation and entirely an objective of political public relations.
Yet the Secretary also demonstrated a potentially distinct role that advisors
can play in an extensive exercise of “movement” rhetoric orchestrated by a
presidential administration. Like Vice President Cheney, he took ownership of the
rhetorical campaign in a manner that augmented the leadership of the President,
while taking on the burdens of responding to criticism and building an complete case
for war across a range of media outlets and appearances. As his rhetoric reveals,
Powell did not disagree with the strategic goals envisioned in a military intervention
in Iraq, but rather argued that to invade Iraq required an international mandate. The
Secretary sustained the central themes of crisis rhetoric and attempted to adapt them
to the contexts international deliberation. At the same he served the crucial function
of demonstrating that President Bush was not ignorant of demands for a more
cautious consideration of military intervention. In a series of media appearances and
significant speeches, Powell would endow the gloss of credibility to the invasion
plans, while legitimating the administration’s hyperventilated rhetoric of crisis
through a sober recounting of imminent threat.

252

Chapter 5 Endnotes

1
Steven Weisman, “Threat and Response: How Powell Lined Up Votes; Starting
With His President’s,” New York Times, November 9, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

2
“Dueling Power Centers,” New York Times, January 7, 2001, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

3
Alan Sipress, “Powell Earns Style Points at State,” Washington Post, March 4,
2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe; Thomas Ricks, “Rumsfeld Impresses
Armed Services Panel,” Washington Post, January 12, 2001, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

4
Jane Perlez, “The General Picks Up Where He Left off,” New York Times, January
28, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

5
Robert Kagan, “Calculating the ‘Rumsfeld Effect,’” Washington Post, January 19,
2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

6
Jane Perelz, “Bushs Team’s Counsel is Divided on Foreign Policy,” New York
Times, March 27, 2001, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

7
Ibid.

8
“Powell Discusses Reviving Mideast Peace Process,” CNN Transcripts, February
24, 2001, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0102/24/se.01.html; Michael
Kelley, “The Conflict Within,” Washington Post, March 28, 2001, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

9
Jake Tapper, “Did Bush Bungle Relations with North Korea,” Salon.com, March
15, 2001,
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/03/15/north_korea/index.html.

10
Anthony York, “Whither Colin Powell?,” Salon.com, May 7, 2001,
http://archive.salon.com/politics/red/2001/05/07/blue/index.html.

11
Fred Kaplan, “The Tragedy of Colin Powell: How the Bush Presidency Destroyed
Him,” Slate, February 19, 2004, http://www.slate.com/id/2095756/.

253

12
David Masci, “Are Arafat and Sharon Stumbling Blocks to Peace?,” CQ
Researcher 12, n. 29 (2002), http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/.

13
David Cloud, “Powell’s Influence on Middle East Debate Grows, But For How
Long?” Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

14
“U.S. Secretary of State Ends Middle East Tour Without Cease Fire Deal,” Facts
on File, April 18, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002247350.asp

15
Todd Purdum “Embattled, Scrutinized, Powell Soldiers On,” New York Times,
July 25, 2002., http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

16
Ibid.

17
Colin Powell, quoted in Lawrence Kaplan, “The US Secretary of State Dislikes
Military Intervention Because He Has Problems Understanding the World,” Prospect
60, February, 2001, http://www.prospect-
magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=3392.

18
ABC News/Washington Post Poll, August 12, 2002, quoted in Douglas Foyle,
“Leading the Public to War? The Influence of American Public Opinion on the Bush
Administration’s Decision to Go to War in Iraq,” International Journal of Public
Opinion Research 16, no 3 (2004): 278.

19
Ibid.

20
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11
Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3
(2005): 530.

21
T.E. Ricks, “Timing, Tactics on Iraq War Disputed,” Washington Post, August 1,
2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

22
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, “Bush Has Received Pentagon Option on
Attacking Iraq,” New York Times, September 21, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

23
Elizabeth Bumiller, “Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq,” New York
Times, September 7, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

24
Bob Woodward, Bush at War, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 332-336.

254

25
Richard Cheney, quoted in Seymour Hersh, “The Stovepipe,” The New Yorker,
Oct 27, 2003, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact.

26
Donald Rumsfeld, “Inspections Would Be ‘Very Difficult,’”
CNN/insidepolitics.com, August 13, 2002,
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/13/iraq.pentagon/index.html.

27
Brent Scowcroft, “Don’t Attack Saddam,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

28
George W. Bush, quoted in Elizabeth Bumiller, “President Notes Dissent on Iraq,”
New York Times, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

29
Elizabeth Bumiller, “President Notes Dissent on Iraq” New York Times,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe; See also James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans,
(New York: Viking, 2004), 341-342.

30
Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in
Foreign Policy (revised edition), (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2005), 136.

31
Tamara Lipper, “Selling the World on War,” Newsweek, September 23, 2002.

32
Woodward, Bush at War, 334.

33
“U.S. Vice President Cheney Backs Military Action to Oust Iraqi President,” Facts
on File, August 29, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002259570.asp.

34
Foyle, “Leading the Public to War?,” 280.

35
Ibid.

36
Quoted in Elizabeth Bumiller, “Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq,”
New York Times, September 7, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

37
“U.S. President Bush Vows to Seek Support From Congress; Allies on Iraq
Attack,” Facts on File, September 5, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002260160.asp.

38
David Ignatius, “Wilsonian Course for War,” Washington Post, August 30, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

255

39
Mike Allen and Karen DeYoung, “Bush Seeks Hill Approval on Iraq war,”
Washington Post, September 5, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

40
Ibid.

41
George W. Bush, quoted in Karen Tumulty, “Making His Case,” Time, September
9, 2002,
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/09/time.us.vs.saddam/index.html.

42
“Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National
Convention,” August 26, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.

43
Condoleezza Rice, interview by Wolf Blitzer, CNN Late Edition, September 8,
2002, http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/wolf.htm.

44
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 343.

45
“U.S. President Challenges United Nations to Enforce Iraqi Disarmament,” Facts
on File, September 12, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002260660.asp.

46
Kenneth T. Walsh, “Words of War,” US News and World Report, Sept 23, 2002,
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/020923/archive_022650.htm.

47
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 343-344.

48
“Hill Leaders, Bush to Talk Iraq,” CNN/insidepolitics, September 4, 2002,
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/03/congress.iraq/index.html.

49
James Dao, “Powell Says Next U.S. Step Involving Iraq To Come Soon,” New
York Times, September 4, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

50
James Dao, “Powell Defends First Strike Option,” New York Times, September 8,
2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

51
“U.S. President Bush Challenges UN to Enforce Iraqi Disarmament,” Facts on
File, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002260660.asp.

52
George W. Bush, quoted in Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 2004), 184.

256

53
Remarks by the President in Address to the United Nations General Assembly,
September 12, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-
1.html.

54
Ibid.

55
Ibid.

56
Colin Powell, CNN with Paula Zahn, September 13, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

57
“Iraq Offers Return of United Nations Weapons Inspectors 'Without Conditions,'”
Facts on File, September 19, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002261190.asp.

58
Dick Gephardt, “Bush is Playing Politics With The Lives of American people,”
The Guardian, September 28, 2002,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,800693,00.html.

59
“Iraq Offers Return of United Nations Weapons Inspectors 'Without Conditions,'”
Facts on File, September 19, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002261190.asp.

60
T. Perdum & Elizabeth Bumiller, “Bush Seeks Power to Use ‘All Means’ to Oust
Hussein,” New York Times, September 20, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

61
Gallup poll quoted in Douglas Foyle ““Leading the Public to War? The Influence
of American Public Opinion on the Bush Administration’s Decision to Go to War in
Iraq,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16, no3 (2004): 282.

62
Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 168.

63
Jonathon Winer, quoted in “The 2002 Vote on Iraq,” PBS Frontline Interview,
October 2004,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/kerry/iraq.html.

64
George W. Bush, quoted in Sean Laughlin, “Dems, GOP Trade Jabs Over Iraq,”
CNN/insidepolitics.com September 26, 2002,
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/25/iraq.congress/index.html.

257

65
Dana Bash, “Cheney Cites Saddam While Campaigning,”
CNN.com/insidepolitcs.com.

66
“U.S. President Bush Seeks Congressional Authorization to Attack Iraq;
Preemptive Strategy Outlined,” Facts on File, September 26, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002261620.asp.

67
Patricia Dunmire, “Preempting the Future: Rhetoric and Ideology of the Future in
Political Discourse,” Discourse and Society 16, no. 4 (2005): 495.

68
Ibid.

69
John Lewis Gaddis, “A Grand Strategy of Transformation,” Foreign Policy 133.
(2002): 52.

70
Ibid., 53.

71
Franklin Eric Wester, “Preemption and Just War: Considering the Case of Iraq,”
Parameters 34, no. 4. (2004): 20-39.

72
Dennis Ross, quoted in Dunmire, “Preempting the Future,” 496.

73
Willam Keller and Gordon Mitchell, “Preemption, Prevention,
Prevarication,” in Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed.
William Keller and Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006),
10-11.

74
G. Thomas Goodnight, “Strategic Doctrine, Public Debate, and the Terror War” in
Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William Keller and
Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), 93-114.

75
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.

76
“U.S. President Bush Seeks Action on 'Urgent' Iraqi Threat,” Facts on File,
October 10, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002263040.asp.

77
Ibid.

78
Todd Purdum with Julia Preston, “Powell Says U.N. Ought to Hold up Iraq
Inspections,” New York Times, October 2, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

258

79
Todd Purdum with David Firestone, “Chief U.N. Inspector Backs U.S.,
Demanding Full Iraq Disclosure,” New York Times, October 5, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

80
John Warner, quoted in Todd Purdum with David Firestone, “Chief U.N. Inspector
Backs U.S., Demanding Full Iraq Disclosure,” New York Times, October 5, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

81
Foyle “Leading the Public to War?,” 283.

82
Ibid.

83
Miles Pomper, “Senate Democrats in Disarray After Gephardt’s Deal on Iraq,” CQ
Weekly, October 5, 2002.

84
Colin Powell, quoted in Woodward, Bush at War, 203.

85
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Public
law 107-243, 116 Stat. 1497-1502 (2002), http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-
bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ243.107.

86
Foyle, “Leading the Public to War?,” 283.

87
Allison Mitchell and Karl Hulse, “Congress Authorizes Bush to Use Force Against
Iraq, Creating a Broad Mandate,” New York Times, October 11, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

88
Chaim Kauffman, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of
the War in Iraq,” International Security 29, no.1 (2004): 31.

89
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Public
law 107-243, 116 Stat. 1497-1502 (2002), http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-
bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ243.107.

90
Thomas Daschle, quoted in Allison Mitchell, “Democrats, War of War in Iraq,
Also Worry of Battling Bush,” New York Times, September 14, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

91
David Sanger, “Bush Sees ‘Urgent Duty’ to Pre-empt Attack by Iraq,” New York
Times, October 7, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

259

92
“U.S. House Leaders Back Iraq War Resolution,” Facts on File, October 3, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002262490.asp.

93
“U.S. President Signs Resolution Authorizing Force Against Iraq,” Facts on File,
Oct 17, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002263460.asp.

94
“U.N. Security Council Fails to Compromise on Iraq Resolution,” Facts on File,
October 24, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002264060.asp.

95
Remarks by the President in South Dakota Welcome, November 3, 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/11/20021103-3.html.

96
“U.N. Security Council Fails to Compromise on Iraq Resolution,” Facts on File,
October 24, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002264060.asp.

97
“U.S. President Bush Challenges United Nations to Enforce Iraqi Disarmament,”
Facts on File, September 12, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002260660.asp.

98
“U.S. Introduces U.N. Resolution On Iraq Arms Inspections,” Facts on File,
October 31, 2002, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002264440.asp.

99
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 347.

100
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441,
http://www.un.org/documents/scres.htm.

101
“U.N. Security Council Unanimously Approves Resolution on Iraqi Weapons
Inspections,” Facts on File, November 14, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002265400.asp.

102
Karen deYoung, “For Powell, A Long Path To a Victory; Pragmatism,
Persistence Led to 15-0 U.N. Vote,” Washington Post, November 10, 2002.,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe; Steven Weisman, “How Powell Lined Up
Votes; Including His President’s,” New York Times, November 9, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

103
Michael O’Hanlon, “How the Hard-liner’s Lost,” Washington Post, November
10, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

260

104
Colin Powell, CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, November 10, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

105
Colin Powell, Face the Nation, November 10, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

106
Foyle, “Leading the Public to War?,” 285.

107
Colin Powell, CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, November 10, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

108
Colin Powell, NPR’s Morning Edition with Bob Edwards, November 28, 2002,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

109
“U.N. Teams Inspect Iraqi Weapons Sites,” Facts on File, December 5, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002267110.asp.

110
Ibid.

111
Colin Powell, CNN Live Event/Special, December 19, 2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

112
Steven Weisman and Julia Preston, “Threats and Responses: Inspections;
Powell Says Iraq Raises Risk of War by Lying on Arms,” New York Times,
December 20, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

113
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 349.

114
“France, Germany Oppose Military Action Against Iraq,” Facts on File, January
23, 2003, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003273950.asp.

115
Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 349.

116
Steven Weisman, “Refusal by French and Germans to Back U.S. on Iraq Has
Undercut Powell's Position,” New York Times, Jan 24, 2003, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

117
Mark Champion, “Powell Pushes Back at Resistance Over Iraq,” Wall Street
Journal, January 27, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

261

118
“Powell on Iraq: 'We Reserve Our Sovereign Right to Take Military Action,”
New York Times, January 26, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

119
Colin Powell, “Colin Powell Speaks at the State Department,” CNN Live/Special
Event, January 27, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

120
“In State of the Union Address Bush Announces Secretary of State Colin Powell
Will Address United Nations,” NBC The News with Brian Williams, January 28,
2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

121
Remarks by President Bush and Polish President Kwasniewski in Photo
Opportunity. January 14, 2003,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030114-2.html.

122
“War in Iraq: How the Die Was Cast Before Transatlantic Diplomacy Failed,”
Financial Times, May 27, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

123
Condoleezza Rice, “Why We Know Iraq is Lying," New York Times, January 23,
2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

124
Bob Woodward, “U.S. to Make Iraq Intelligence Public; Evidence of Weapons
Concealment to Be Shared in Effort to Boost Support for War,” Washington Post,
Janurary 28, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

125
“Iraqi Arms Inspections Continue,” Facts on File, January 19, 2003,
http://www.2facts.com/Ancillaries/temp/51439tempe00254.asp.

126
Gershkoff and Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion,” 531.

127
Keller and Mitchell, “Preemption, Prevention, Prevarication,” 21.

128
“Powell Addresses United Nations on Iraq Threat,” Facts on File, February 6,
2003, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003274860.asp.

129
“France, Germany Block NATO Plan to Aid Turkey, in Deepening Rift with U.S.
on Iraq War,” Facts on File, February 13, 2003,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003275540.asp.

130
“U.S. President Bush's State of the Union Addresses Iraq, Economy,” Facts on
File, January 30, 2003, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003274610.asp.

262

131
Elizabeth Bumiller, “War Public Relations Machine is Put on Full Throttle,” New
York Times, February 8, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

132
Ibid.

133
Ibid.

134
Colin Powell, “U.S. Secretary of State Addresses the U.N. Security Council,”
February 5 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-
1.html.

135
“U.S. Secretary of State Powell's Presentation to the U.N. Security Council:
Excerpts,” Facts on File, February 6, 2003,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003274870.asp.

136
Ibid.

137
Ibid.

138
“Powell Addresses United Nations on Iraq Threat,” Facts on File, February 6,
2003, http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003274860.asp.

139
Ibid.

140
Ibid.

141
Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of
Reason, Value, and Action (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1989): 5.

142
Jamie McIntyre, “Rumsfeld: Al Qaeda Comments 'Misunderstood' Also Concedes
WMD Claims About Iraq Were Proved Wrong,” CNN.com, October 5, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/04/rumsfeld.iraq/index.html.

143
Ibid.

144
Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its
Enemies Since 9/11, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 173-179.

145
Ibid.

263

146
Gershkoff and Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion,” 530-531.

147
Los Angeles Times Poll Study 482, quoted in Gerskoff and Kushner, “Shaping
Public Opinion,” 529.

148
Ari Berman, “U.S. Iraq Policy Gains Support Among Newspapers,” Editor &
Publisher, 7 February 2003,
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_
id=1812676.

149
Michael Gordon, “Powell’s Trademark: Overwhelm Them” New York Times,
February 5, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

150
“The Case Against Iraq” New York Times, February 6, 2003, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

151
Colbert King, “Powell’s Mastery,” Washington Post, February 8, 2003,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

152
William Raspberry, “A Case for Powell, But Not War,” Washington Post,
February 10, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

153
“Endgame,” New York Times, February 7, 2003, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

154
Dianne Feinsten, quoted in David Firestone, “Powell Gets Good Reviews, But
Few Stands Are Changed,” New York Times, February 5, 2003.

155
Julia Preston, “U.N. Envoys Said to Differ Sharply in Reaction to Powell
Speech,” New York Times, February 6, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

156
Ibid.

157
“Powell's Performance Earns Mixed Reviews,” New York Times, February 7,
2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

158
Elizabeth Bumiller, “War Public Relations Machine is Put on Full Throttle,” New
York Times, February 8, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

264

159
“France, Germany Block NATO Plan to Aid Turkey, in Deepening Rift With U.S.
on Iraq War,” Facts on File, February 13, 2003,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003275540.asp.

160
Phillip H. Gordon, “The Truth About Colin Powell,” The Boston Globe,
November 17, 2004, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

161
Colin Powell, “Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell,” Fox News
Sunday, February 9, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

162
Tom Regan, “Media Knocked for Iraq War Coverage. Experts Say US Too Soft,
Foreign Media Often Too Hard,” Christian Science Monitor, February 11, 2004,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0211/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt; “Misperceptions,
the Media and the Iraq War,” Program on International Policy, University of
Maryland. October 2, 2003,
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php?n
id=&id=&pnt=102&lb=brusc.

163
Colin Powell, “Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell,” ABC This Week
February 9, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

164
Ibid.

165
New York Times, “Elusive Qaeda Connections,” February 14, 2003,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

166
Richard Cohen, “Powellian Propaganda?,” Washington Post, February 13, 2003,
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

167
“U.N. Inspectors Report Greater Iraqi Cooperation; U.S., Britain Doubt
Commitment, Threaten Use of Force,” Facts on File, February 20, 2003,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2003276040.asp.

168
Colin Powell, “Secretary Colin Powell Discusses the Situation in Iraq and the
Korean Crisis,” CNBC Capital Report, March 4, 2003, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

169
Colin Powell, “Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell,” Fox News
Sunday, March 9, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

265

170
Christopher Cooper, “U.S. and Europe Dig in Over Iraq,” Wall Street Journal,
March 6, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

171
Steven Weisman and Felicity Barringer, “Powell Attacks Validity of the Work by
Weapons Inspectors in Iraq,” New York Times, March 5, 2003, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

172
Theodore O. Windt. "The Presidency and Speeches on International Crises,"
Speaker and Gavel, 11, no. 1, (1973): 6-14.

173
Tamara Lipper, “Selling the World on War,” Newsweek, September 23, (2002):
26.

266

Chapter 6

Conclusion: Limits of the Vulcan Rhetorical Movement

Through an analysis of critical public speeches and exposure in national news
outlets, this dissertation aimed to demonstrate how presidential advisors act as
crucial advocates within a presidential rhetorical campaign. The advisors of George
W. Bush advanced a language of crisis to sustain and extend presidential foreign
policy. The movement articulated and justified a radical new strategic discourse. The
strategic position defended and augmented the power of the president to make
policy. The campaign was hypothesized to comprise a division of argument burdens
in order to sustain the rhetorical movement behind war. This chapter reviews the
findings of this study. It opens with a discussion of the significance of crisis rhetoric.
The second section elaborates the roles of several advisors in 2001 through 2002,
each upholding a distinct burden within the administration’s strategy of public
argument. Finally, the chapter considers the significance of this historical period of
presidential advisor rhetoric waged largely through national media exposure, and
presents implications for future research.
Crisis rhetoric and transforming foreign policy
The Bush administration’s central arguments for war were articulated over a
period of 18 months prior to the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2001. Four central
issues emerged from what James Klumpp called the “mosaic of facts” presented by
the president and his advisors.
1

267

First, the administration argued that Saddam Hussein was determined to
engage in hostilities with the United States, regardless of the risks to his nation
created by such actions. Second, Saddam Hussein maintained a relationship to Al-
Qaida and was at least partially responsible for the events of September 11, 2001.
Third, the Iraqi leader was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Fourth, Hussein
possessed chemical and biological weapons that could be used against America and
its allies in both the Middle East and the United States.
2
Despite the fact that none of
these claims were ever validated, the administration managed to convince a
considerable majority of U.S. citizens that they were true, and that these arguments
were sufficient justification for a discretionary war.
3
The administration
accomplished this feat of mass persuasion despite the fact that its claims were
refutable prior to the launch of the war.
4

This dissertation contends that presidential advisors played a significant role
in the administration’s arguments for a military intervention in Iraq, because they
were instrumental actors in a rhetorical campaign to justify such a drastic action.
More importantly, their efforts capitalized on the events of 9/11 as a change
presumption to forward the ideological tenets of a radical foreign policy. Each
advisor played in a distinctive role in advancing this policy vision, while defending
the office of the president in the lead-up to the Iraq war. The campaign was waged
by Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Richard Cheney,
and Secretary of State Colin Powell. The organizing tropes of crisis that surfaced in
the wake of 9/11 and the “War on Terror,” provided a discursive repertoire from
268

which they crafted arguments that blurred distinctions between the threats posed by
Al-Qaeda and Iraq. For these presidential advisors, the touchstone of crisis rhetoric
was the symbolic marriage of different threats, allowing them to construct an
atmosphere of imminent and liminal crisis that demanded the government action.
The post-9/11 world was pictured in administration rhetoric as a crisis about to
happen; that could be forestalled only with the interventions around the world. 9/11
was what Denise Bostdorff called a “condensation symbol” of crisis that allowed the
administration to justify rhetorically the preventive Iraq war in 2003 as a logical next
phase in the War on Terror.
5
The discursive space opened up by the declaration of
crisis allowed the administration to introduce a policy prescriptive that anticipated
the necessity of war in Iraq.
To leverage the rhetorical power of crisis required a coordinated movement:
presidential advisors who carried distinct argument burdens to extend, defend, and
amplify the objectives of the President. Together, these advisors sustained the project
of building a public consensus. The notion of crisis rhetoric is not new, but the type
and degree of the pre-war campaign of foreign policy rhetoric suggests a conceptual
amendment.
Bonnie Dow argues that rhetoric functions both in the epideictic and
deliberative senses to sustain a crisis across situations.
6
For Dow, the epideictic
aspect of crisis rhetoric promotes a sense of communal comprehension, which was
clearly evident in the scene-describing rhetoric of the presidential advisors. Their
arguments actively cultivated a specific version of what Condit calls the
269

“understanding” function of epideictic rhetoric.
7
The deliberative aspect functions to
build approval for a policy in response to the event. Aristotle’s definition of
deliberative rhetoric suggests that it is the more appropriate genre in public
arguments where future action is under consideration. Yet as Kathryn Olson noted,
the Bush administration’s pre-war arguments appeared more epideictic than
deliberative.
8
The administration made use of hybrid forms of epideictic reasoning
masked as deliberative arguments in the lead-up to the war. Olson’s observations
framed this dissertation’s investigation of crisis rhetoric, by suggesting that a long-
term strategy of crisis rhetoric would reveal efforts to not only coach a specific
understanding, but deflect criticism and further deliberation.
Crisis rhetoric has been observed previously in distinct timeframes or
moments where rhetoric invokes a specific crisis.
9
For example, a president can
argue a policy or action is necessary to achieve a desirable resolution by promoting
the imminence of a critical transition imposed by an event. Much scholarship focuses
on identifying the particulars of international crisis rhetoric as a genre, cataloging the
argument moves, rhetorical tactics, and timing that typifies these speeches or
rhetorical acts.
10
This dissertation, however, hypothesized that crisis rhetoric was
endemic to rhetorical movements asserting changes to foreign policy conventions.
Crisis rhetoric was considered at the outset to be more than an episodic strategy to
establish presidential authority, but rather a means for the Bush administration to
replace the “commanding ideas” that had governed the foreign policy thinking left
over from the Cold War.
11
Crisis rhetoric, in this context, was conceived as a
270

discursive strategy to alter scenic perceptions and change the political climate across
contexts to defend the logic of war against Iraq. Considered as a rhetorical
movement, this involved a division of argument burdens to sustain the effects of
crisis rhetoric over time.
Crisis rhetoric is therefore useful for leaders to enact policy changes that
require broad support. As Denise Bostdorff observes, crisis rhetoric serves the
function of calling into existence a national constituency, invoking an implicit “we”
that is imagined in the rhetoric at a moment of critical decision.
12
But the “moment”
itself is often rhetorically manufactured or sustained. Over time, the repetition of
urgency and threat can solidify into an enduring set of terms that structure perception
– what Kenneth Burke calls “terministic screens.”
13
These manifest across the range
of public argument in media that self-reference and reaffirm their assumptions.
During the Cold War, public speeches, foreign policy advocacy organizations, and
media programming worked together to coach what Robert Ivie calls a “rhetorical
culture” that defined the Cold War terminology.
14
As Burke notes, the “screens” that
dominate public discourse invoke the compulsion to follow the extent of their
assumptions. In case of the Cold War, such policy rhetoric often reinforced the
strategic reality it described, locking policy makers into the consequences of their
circumscribed worldview.
But the Cold War was more than a history of terministic strategies sustained
by crisis rhetoric. It constituted a lengthy campaign by advisors and a network of
advocates to promote a particular perception of national security. Crisis rhetoric
271

unfolded as something greater than a “contest of ideas,” but through a series of actors
responding to events; their efforts over time constructed an encompassing view of
national security encoded in an enduring policy discourse. Their view of the Cold
War was inclusive; it involved the public in a larger struggle to defend the United
States against an all-out attack on its culture, values, and interests. In this sense,
crisis rhetoric normalized the ideological presumptions that generated foreign policy
across time.
The Cold War is presented in this dissertation as symbolic of the kind of
rhetorical campaign waged by administrations and their advisors. Its foundational
documents, such as NSC-68 and later episodes of public argument like the “Team-B”
exercise confirm the crucial role that advisors play forwarding a strategic doctrine
grounded in the tropes of crisis. Yet the Cold War is more than an instructive analog
of the Bush administration’s own campaign. Its discourse represents the point of
departure for Bush’s strategic advisors – the arguments that the “new” post-9/11
strategy would be defined against.
The Cold War discourse formation and the Bush administration’s proposed
doctrine are inextricably linked through their strategic ambitions. Both represent a
larger struggle by policy advocates to forge, repair, and finally abandon a foreign
policy discourse. In this sense, they were both transformative. The Cold War was a
rhetorical project sustained across time to elaborate and defend a paradigmatic vision
of national security. Its argument formation was promoted by advisors and
concerned public advocates to stress the significance of an existential crisis for the
272

national audience. This effort entrenched the policy tropes of the period, such as
“containment,” American exceptionalism, and the defense of democratic regimes
against an encroaching Communist threat.
Yet this argument formation was then symbolically abandoned by the Bush
administration. Bush declared in the introduction to the 2002 NSS that “deterrence
worked” to help end the “balance of terror” that had divided the world during the
Cold War. Yet the post-9/11 war required a policy vision that could confront a reality
where “weapons of mass destruction are weapons of choice.” The new
administration strategy retained the tropes of crisis to legitimate its policy
transformation; its advisors seized upon the opportunity provided by the events of
9/11 to promote the necessity and scope of Bush’s policy vision.
The crisis rhetoric of Cold War advisors demonstrates how a supposedly
imminent threat rhetorically sustained by both government and media can become
institutionalized in the policy imagination. This was not accomplished through any
single rhetorical effort. Rather, it was often the product of a coordinated argument
campaign that defined a normative policy imagination, defended presidential
administrations, and interpreted the international “scene.” Cold War crisis discourse
suggests that analysis of crisis rhetoric look to the interaction texts and events via the
rhetoric of multiple actors over time.
15
This dissertation has applied this notion by
looking at a coordinated body of foreign policy arguments comprising a rhetorical
movement. In this case, “movement rhetoric,” of systemic crisis was amplified in
complicit media framing to reinforce policy ideas proposed by presidential advisors.
273

David Zarefksy argues that “movement rhetoric” is just a relevant for
government-based persuasive campaigns as it is for social movements.
16
The cycle
of movement rhetoric, according to Zarefsky, tracks a body of policy discourse from
its emergence in the public sphere, through its clash with existing discourse/policy
language, to finally its success or failure in supplanting the “status quo.” This
dissertation presents a rhetorical movement as the appropriate analytical metaphor
for the Bush administration’s drive to war in Iraq, because the notion of “movement”
captures the transformative ambitions and ideology-driven arguments of the
administration’s campaign. Movement rhetoric grounds articulations of crisis
rhetoric in a coordinated, coherent campaign to bring about more fundamental
changes in communal understanding of foreign policy.
The Iraq war required a rhetorical movement in order to transform public
imagination about the administration’s foreign policy objectives. The movement
needed to cultivate a sense of imminent threat cultivated through a lengthy
engagement with the national media in order to legitimize a preventive war. It
created the urgency to forestall deliberation about alternatives to policy, and
deflected criticism from the administration until the “crisis” was resolved. Yet the
crisis arguments of the Bush administration after 9/11 betrayed a liminal quality as
well, suggesting that the “moment” of crisis was never to be resolved. The War on
Terror was argued to be a long war. The only recourse implied in the rhetoric was
constant vigilance; a sustained deference to the government’s ability to seek out and
neutralize emergent threats. From this basis any policy could be justified as a proper
274

and thoughtful reaction to the possibility of crisis. As such, Bush’s war rhetoric was
never a subject of critical deliberation, but a sustained project of epideictic
characterization carried out by multiple actors within the administration’s rhetorical
movement.
The “movement” perspective affords the vantage point to see the Bush
administration’s pre-war rhetoric after 9/11 as a discursive project, and not simply a
“power grab.” The administration cynically availed itself to the tropes of crisis in
order to consolidate national support for a war in Iraq, by using crisis to challenge
conventional understanding of the international environment. Between 2001 and
2003 the Bush administration systematically argued a new scenic calculus that made
an invasion of Iraq a logical and sensible policy outcome. President Bush was but
one actor in this project. Bringing the country to war required a challenge to previous
foreign policy conventions such as “containment” and “deterrence” that could only
be introduced in stages of public argument - each solidifying a discursive framework
for the subsequent speaker to build upon. As this dissertation demonstrates, the
administration deployed its advisors to introduce arguments that would lay the
ideological groundwork for a war, defend the President, and diminish alternatives to
its preferred Iraq policy.
This dissertation explores three argument “roles” intrinsic to the
administration’s rhetorical movement that leverage aspects of crisis rhetoric.
Wolfowitz’s rhetoric provides the ideological framework for the emerging “Bush
doctrine.” His arguments build upon a legacy of Cold War crisis-laden foreign policy
275

reasoning. They reinforce the basic premises that would justify the preventive war in
Iraq, by establishing a normative template for arguing foreign policy that obviated
action against ever-present threats. Cheney, in turn, draws upon Wolfowitz’s
framework by amplifying the scene of crisis itself. His rhetoric, now known to be
largely misleading, articulates an urgent and imposing sense of crisis about Iraq. The
Vice President’s public arguments establish the imminence of Iraqi threat, linked it
with existing public fears about Islamic terrorism, and reinforced the legitimacy of
taking military action to remove such a threat. Finally, Powell’s public voice
provides a dose of credibility to the bellicose persona of Cheney and Wolfowitz. The
Bush administration uses Powell’s public conversion from skeptic to adherent to
demonstrate the gravity of the Iraq crisis. At first, Powell’s engagement with the
U.N. provides a gloss of legitimacy essential to winning domestic adherents to the
Iraq policy. Then, as international support collapses, his eventual turn to argument
forms introduced by Wolfowitz and Cheney solidifies the perception of elite
consensus on Iraq. Debate about Iraq shifts to the international sphere, with the
United States apparently unifying under the collective “we” of crisis rhetoric. The
following section provides a more thorough review of how each of these advisors
articulated this coordinated and self-reinforcing rhetorical campaign.
Wolfowitz: architect of a strategic doctrine
The history of the Bush administration’s march to war in March of 2003 was not a
seamless progression of policy rhetoric. Much like the evolution of Truman’s Cold
War doctrine, the post-9/11 changes in foreign policy were just as much a reflection
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of political calculation as they were a product of strategic revision. The major
moments of advisor public address in the campaign revealed the administration’s
internal moves towards war and reaction to external political considerations. This
dissertation traced public evidence of the campaign back to the early rhetoric of
Wolfowitz, and the brand of ideologically driven rhetoric that he injected into the
administration’s public foreign policy arguments. As previously discussed, the Bush
administration was populated with foreign policy advisors who adhered to a neo-
conservative foreign policy vision. The events of 9/11 provided a serendipitous
convergence between their ideological comprehension of nascent global threat and
the visceral reality of terrorist attacks on American soil. The neo-conservative
worldview was an ideological formation that anticipated future attack, and thus
provided a ready template for public argument framed U.S. foreign policy in the
wake of 9/11. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was a public
intellectual steeped in the traditions of neo-conservative discursive logic, and thus
was well positioned to articulate its implementation in U.S. foreign policy.
Wolfowitz is described in this dissertation as upholding the burden of
offering an ideological set of arguments upon which later justifications for war could
be built. His argument role, more than any other advisor, demonstrated how the pre-
war campaign of crisis rhetoric should more appropriately be understood as a larger
discursive project that legitimizing the neo-conservative principals that defined the
Bush foreign policy revolution. The tenets of the National Security Strategy released
in 2002 can in turn be traced to the normative policy guidelines that Wolfowitz
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authorized in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. Wolfowitz’s arguments offered a
basic language and reasoning to justify the preventive war in Iraq. His repetition of
scenic crisis depicted a world fraught with impending (and never-ending) danger.
These dangers implied a responsibility for the United States to act; and determine the
course of opportunity presented by crisis.
Wolfowitz’s statements in his June 2001 Commencement Address at the
Military academy (before 9/11) and his subsequent testimony for the Quadrennial
Defense Review in October of 2001 articulate a terministic framing of policy reality.
By focusing repeatedly on terms like “surprise” and “courage,” he constructs a
scenic calculus and a normative template for policy action. The circumscribed
worldview depicted in Wolfowitz’s dire global environment thus underwrote fully
the administration’s foreign policy discourse, to sanction interventions.
Wolfowitz’s arguments did more than unfold and establish a rhetoric of
scenic descriptions. He displayed a method of argument that rendered the policies he
advocated easier to defend; a kind of circular rationality based almost entirely on
strategic presumptions. Wolfowitz deployed a simple form of deductive reasoning.
The presumptions themselves were not subject to deliberation. In this sense, his
claims enabled a distinctly epideictic hybrid of deliberative discourse – where
arguments are forwarded in deference to deliberative form, but contain a built-in
conclusion. For example, Saddam Hussein’s character was beyond debate, yet
speculation on what his regime might do was not. Rather, the most prevalent logic of
Wolfowitz’s policy argument focused on the consequences of letting threats go
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unchecked. This form of argument was not new, per se. This form of argument had
appeared periodically in moments of Cold War alarmist rhetoric, such as Albert
Wolhstetter’s “Missile Gap” report in 1959 and the Team B intelligence exercise in
1976. Wolfowitz only updated this kind of policy argument once in a position as a
presidential advisor to argue for a preventive war in Iraq.
Wolfowitz’s rhetoric offered sweeping systemic arguments about
international relations, including relations of cause and effect (the United States must
be seen as strong to discourage competition), environment (the world teetered on the
verge of crisis), and norms (the U.S. should maintain its primacy over others states).
He was able to articulate from this basic discourse formation a policy focus on Iraq.
The formation was a logical extension of his previous systemic rhetoric. In
Zarefsky’s terminology, Wolfowitz’s arguments, sponsored by the Bush
administration, were representative of the crucial inception phase of a foreign policy
movement. As with social movements, however, the administration’s rhetorical
movement required outlets of exposure that defined and interpreted in a way
supporting its version of means and ends. In this way, the administration strove to
justify an aggressive attack on a foreign power as legitimate U.S. policy.
The shocking events of 9/11 and the lingering strategic ambiguities inherited
from Clinton’s post-Cold War “conjunctive diplomacy” yielded an optimal moment
for the rise of a novel, paradigmatic foreign policy discourse.
17
Wolfowitz’s vision
substituted passionate conviction for the previous modular tactics justifications that
had characterized Clinton’s conjunctive diplomacy. The conservative mandate to
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avoid “surprise” provided a clear compass for the stewards of national security to
act, and a framework to distill the complexities of international affairs. Not
surprisingly, Wolfowitz received considerably more attention in the national press
soon after 9/11. His appearances featured a rhetoric that situated the events of 9/11
within his larger systemic depiction of state-sponsored terrorist threats. More
importantly, the news media itself spread his arguments by anticipating and
participating in Wolfowitz’s issue framing of foreign policy. Wolfowitz extended his
more formal public address in talk show appearances, further coaching a perception
of security to precipitate a sense of crisis about Iraq. These appearances were
buttressed by a network of like-minded administration spokespersons and media
pundits, such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and Newt Gingrich. As 2001 drew to
a close, regime change and ousting Saddam Hussein had reemerged as a viable, even
sensible policy option, openly discussed in national media outlets with scant critique.
Wolfowitz and a web of neo-conservative advocacy had promoted compelling
terministic screens of the Iraq-as-threat frame in the news media.
Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address confirmed the centrality of the
Deputy Secretary’s ideological arguments. The speech reinforced the “War on
Terror,” using the terms terror and terrorist 36 times. At the same time, the speech
openly conflated terrorism with the so-called “axis of evil” nations, Iraq, Iran, and
North Korea. The administration was already deciding a course for war in secret by
February of 2002, yet a fully elaborated set of arguments for war had yet to be tested
in the public sphere. The swell of neo-conservative rhetoric primed media frames
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with a discourse legitimizing a muscular foreign policy. It was no secret that the
administration viewed Iraq as a target. Their strategic arguments, however, needed to
be contextualized with rhetoric that painted the threat as imminent.
Cheney: arguing the imminence of crisis
Ramping up an imminent crisis required the efforts of Vice President Richard
Cheney. Beginning in February of 2002, his arguments assumed the function of
“trial balloon,” elaborating and concretizing the urgency of crisis introduced in
Bush’s State of the Union. Cheney argued the crucial link between the more abstract
logic of Wolfowitz’s scenic calculus and a more immediate casus belli for the
general public. Wolfowitz narrated a world in crisis– that required the realignment of
strategic priorities and assets by the United States. While his rhetoric insinuated that
Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States, a comprehensive evidence-based
case had yet to be made in the Spring of 2002.
The problem for the administration was a lack of available conclusive
evidence. The Vice President intervened with arguments between February and
August of 2002 to demonstrate that there was, indeed, a threat. He implied the
government had engaged in deliberative due diligence, while implicitly suggesting
that no alternative was available other than war. Cheney presented a set of epideictic
statements to define the situation of crisis as he was discouraging public dissent over
the administration’s conclusions. These public arguments revealed the central
strategy of the administration’s public campaign for war, and readily demonstrated
the conventions of both crisis and war rhetoric.
18
His arguments reveal that he
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carried the burden of piety for the majority of the administration’s rhetorical
movement, through a continuous framing of the Iraq crisis as both imminent and
beyond debate.
A rhetorical attitude of piety, as Burke notes, is an emphasis toward
sustaining consensus over a specific “schema of orientation.”
19
For Cheney, this
meant a substantive series of argument moves to intervene against potential
challenges to the administration’s pro-war frame and to promote the scenic discourse
that Wolfowitz had elaborated. Most historical accounts point to the end of August
as the launch of the “PR offensive” engaged by the administration. Yet the evidence
reveals the Vice President steadily seeding public discourse starting in the Spring of
2002. By the time Cheney made his provocative August address, he had already
worked to conjoin the memories of Islamic terrorism with depictions of an armed,
defiant Iraq.
The Vice President’s strategy also envisioned a symbolic convergence of Al-
Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This has the focalizing effect of putting limited policy
front and center while drawing attention away from other issues. Cheney’s initial
task in the Spring of 2002, for instance, was to divert U.S. attention away from the
simmering Palestinian-Israeli crisis, while asserting that Iraq was constituted
material threats. The bulk of Cheney’s arguments elaborated threats as a crisis-born
pragmatism. These arguments bolstered the authority of the executive to define and
manage the Iraq crisis. He described Bush’s rhetoric during the 2002 State of the
Union by stating that its “reassuring to have a commander in chief who tells the truth
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and means exactly what he says.”
20
Cheney’s rhetoric, in the manner of classical
epideictic argument, did not invite the audience to judge the actions of president.
Yet by May of 2002, public concern was growing that the administration was
rushing towards a war. At the same time, bipartisan calls for a commission to
investigate the government’s failures on 9/11 increased. The Vice President was in
the vanguard of the administration’s public defense on national talk shows, first
arguing that a commission was not necessary, and then forcefully reasserting the
omnipresence of threats. Cheney claimed that inquiry about the administration could
derail its ability to protect the United States.
21
His television appearances in May
unambiguously declared that a new terrorist attack was imminent, and gave him a
platform to use the issue of Iraq to deflect mounting criticism of the President.
Summer of 2002 was arguably the most critical phase in the course of the
administration’s rhetorical movement. The Vice President had effectively amplified
Wolfowitz’s systemic crisis discourse; positioning Iraq at the top of the
administration’s foreign policy agenda. Dissenting voices were raised by Republican
elites to challenge the administration. The President had not defended an Iraq
invasion. The press indexed its reporting to what was perceived to be dissenting
views on the necessity of an Iraq intervention. Cheney, in turn, responded to the
critics with a series of appearances in August that culminated in a forceful case for
war.
The public dissensus revealed the moment to be what Zarefsky called a
rhetorical crisis for the administration’s movement – the point at which the rhetoric
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on Iraq could either displace lingering doubt over an invasion or fail as a legitimate
policy. Growing suspicion that the administration had not made its case meant that
the “aggressor” rhetors’ claims (the administration’s rhetorical campaign) could no
longer be held in “mental balance” with the administration opponents’ arguments.
22

The movement could not progress to the “consummation” phase without some sort
of resolution that effectively quieted advocates of the status quo. To put an end to
debate, the Vice President resorted to another dimension of epideictic discourse,
amplification. Cheney stated that the U.S. knew Iraq was in possession of WMDs
and was clearly on a path towards the imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Previous months of public arguments infused with the ideological tenor of
Wolfowitz’s vision were capped by a bold declaration of imminent crisis. Internal
debate soon collapsed to procedural questions of how to implement the
administration’s objectives of dealing with Iraq.
The outcome of the August “rhetorical crisis” seemed, in retrospect, to have
been pre-figured by the movement rhetoric that had come before it. Cheney’s stark
indictment of Iraq came at the end of a lengthy rhetorical campaign constructing Iraq
as an imminent threat. When polling about Iraq began in September, it was clear that
a majority of Americans had adopted the administration’s position.
23
Despite these
developments, the administration still demurred from explicit calls for war even after
Cheney’s call for a military solution. Public support appeared to hinge on legitimacy
granted by a congressional judgment.
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The Vice President’s argument proved insufficient to quiet the caution of
administration critics. The terministic screens of Wolfowitz’s strategic language,
later extended in Cheney’s repetitive threat amplification, still needed more than
simple deductions about Saddam Hussein character to authorize war. His cynical
misrepresentation bridged the gap between the ideological rhetoric and empirical
evidence, by making crisis more real. The warnings were jarringly blunt, and
provoked concern around the world that the United States would unilaterally declare
war.
24
Yet Cheney’s bold declaration also created a space for the President to chart a
more moderate course, by distancing himself from the Vice President. Cheney had
laid out a justification for war, allowing the President to articulate a measured
rhetoric to consolidate national consensus on Iraq by shifting the debate to an
international forum. At the President’s behest, the more “moderate” Secretary of
State Colin Powell would rearticulate Cheney’s claims in less inflammatory, but still
urgent terms. Powell initially rearticulated the Vice President’s claims to the
international community as a more reasonable set of arguments, while presenting a
deliberative persona to legitimate the administration’s actions for the American
public.
Powell: symbolizing credibility and consensus
The administration’s public retreat from Cheney’s forceful remarks also
enabled the administration to quell perception of internal dissension by shifting the
burden of public argument to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. President Bush
formally passed this task to Powell on September 12, 2002, by announcing the
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United States’ intention to seek a new resolution in the United Nations Security
Council for weapons inspections in Iraq. The President’s decision to elevate Powell
addressed the concerns that the United States was plunging towards war without
international support. Reaching out to Powell signified to skeptics flexibility in the
administration’s plans. The Secretary enjoyed bipartisan credibility. His inclusion in
the campaign would prove a potent symbol. After September of 2002, Powell
represented not just the administration, but the United States in arguing before the
U.N. Security Council.
The administration pushed through resolutions in the U.S. congress
authorizing the use of force in Iraq by exploiting ambiguities in its commitments.
The administration pointed out that for Powell to negotiate effectively at the United
Nations, he would need to be seen as speaking for the country as a whole.
Fortunately for Bush, Democratic opposition wilted under the pressure of the
impending midterm elections. Fearful of being seen as obstructing national security
concerns, the Democrats sought to move past war deliberations in early October of
2002. The swift end to the congressional “debate” was a testimony to the
administration’s rhetorical maneuvering. Many legislators cited Cheney’s arguments
as their reason for granting the administration authority to wage war.
25
Congress was
not willing to be seen as obstructing plans to secure the nation from imminent
nuclear attack.
Whether or not congressional approval helped motivate the Security Council
to cooperate with the United States, the evidence points to the Secretary’s ability to
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rephrase the administration’s crisis rhetoric in a way that conveyed a willingness to
negotiate while sustaining the imminence of Iraqi threat. Powell’s rhetorical strategy
for dealing with the Security Council rested initially on sustaining the legitimacy of
the United Nations as a multilateral institution, and less on crisis tropes. By
suggesting the possibility for a peaceful end to crisis, his work with the United
Nations yielded a diplomatic victory for the United States, with the signing of a
resolution demanding new weapons inspections. Resolution 1441, ratified in early
November, contained language that the administration believed could be used to
authorize force if Iraq was found to be in “material breach” of previous weapons-
related resolutions. The ambiguities of its language concealed the fundamental divide
between the members of the Security Council and the Bush administration’s ultimate
objective: regime change.
Passage of the 1441 marked the impending reversal of Powell’s public
persona. After November of 2002 the Secretary shifted his stance with the Security
Council to clarify that the most realistic outcome for disarmament was the removal
of Saddam Hussein. He repeatedly argued in talk show interviews during the
ensuing inspections that the Iraqi regime was a priori deceitful. For Powell, Iraq’s
handling of the weapons inspectors was a “game that is not working.”
26
His obvious
turn-about from the concessionary language of 1441 resulted in a very public
rejection of U.S. plans for another resolution by France, Germany, and Russia in
January of 2003. The situation-defining arguments of the administration’s discourse
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on Iraq effectively bound them to an outcome that was incommensurable with the
international community.
27

Soon after it became clear that the Security Council would not consider a new
resolution, Powell’s rhetoric shifted more dramatically to acquire the crisis language
of the Vice President’s 2002 rhetoric. He dismissed the inspections as indicative of
Iraqi non-compliance with the will of the international community. The data gleaned
from the U.N. inspection teams did not corroborate the information Powell claimed
would demonstrate Iraqi deception. During the 2003 State of the Union Address,
President Bush announced that Powell would provide this evidence to the U.N.
Security Council. The Secretary would make the most comprehensive evidence-
based case yet marshaled in the administration’s arguments for war.
Secretary Powell’s February 5 speech was an amalgam of the crisis rhetoric
that had animated previous administration arguments. Powell distilled these
arguments into a compelling mosaic of circumstantial evidence that the Secretary
called a “disturbing pattern” of Iraqi activity. He buttressed the alarmist claims made
by Wolfowitz and Cheney with an array of arguments made persuasive through their
quantity rather than strength of evidence. The Secretary couched these claims within
a rhetoric of imminence, by speculating that Saddam Hussein could potentially field
WMDs and was shown to have links with members of Al-Qaeda. The effect of his
speech was pronounced. Polling data revealed that Powell’s speech created a surge
of support for military intervention against Iraq amongst Americans. Journalists and
editorials lauded the Secretary for his overwhelming presentation of facts, sounds,
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and imagery. Across the spectrum of political affiliation in the United States,
Powell’s speech was widely regarded as confirming the threat posed by Iraq. It
condensed the arguments of the President, performed a legitimating function for the
domestic audience, and silenced domestic criticism.
In the month prior to the war in March, the Secretary repeatedly went on talk
shows to dismiss the possibility that Iraq was cooperating, and assert that a military
intervention was the only feasible solution to the crisis. His words echoed the
precepts of Wolfowitz’s strategic doctrine: “we can’t ignore danger. We can’t ignore
the challenge.”
28
Two weeks prior to the launch of war, his rhetoric began to mirror
Cheney’s speculations. For Powell, not attacking Iraq would mean that “a terrible
message will go far and wide to all those who conspire to do harm…”
29
The
Secretary began his role in the campaign as a voice of reason, lending credibility to
the rhetorical movement’s possibilities of a negotiated peace and international
coalition. By March of 2003, he had retreated to appeals to fear and indignation over
Iraqi subterfuge.
Powell’s role in the administration’s rhetorical campaign can be described as
carrying the movement into its “consummation” phase; where a movement
perseveres in its bid to secure national consensus. The Secretary’s arguments
navigated the terrain between the demands of international argument and the
movement’s ultimate concern with the domestic public. His symbolic performance of
deliberation barely masked the largely epideictic arguments that characterized the
administration’s rhetorical movement. Powell was tasked with extending the
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argument logic that Wolfowitz had presented, while legitimating the President’s
decision to follow Cheney’s call for war. In this regard, Powell’s role in the
campaign signified the importance of argument timing and the ethos of the advisor
when contributing to a rhetorical movement.
The Secretary’s crucial role in sustaining the movement represents a
cautionary tale for presidential advisors. The leveraging of Powell’s broad credibility
in February of 2003 constituted a shrewd and arguably cynical move to discourage
remaining opposition The administration managed to translate the appearance of
Powell’s initial dissent in 2002 into a vital contribution to the campaign. Powell’s
conversion provided legitimacy to the shift of burden for justifying remaining at
peach to Saddam Hussein. Two years later, Powell would express regret for the
factual inaccuracies of his landmark speech to the U.N.
30
Larry Wilkerson, his
former Chief of Staff, argued that Powell was effectively used by the “cabal” of
other officials (including Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld) to push their
own objectives on Iraq.
31
Despite such retrospection, it is clear from the evidence of
the Secretary’s own rhetoric that he adopted and indeed carried forward the
arguments endemic to the administration’s rhetorical campaign.
Secretary Powell, like Cheney, presented arguments that drew on the ethos
and history of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Any demonstrative recent evidence that the
regime in fact possessed weapons of mass destruction was small. Often Powell made
overtures to the international community, by repositioning the consequences of Iraqi
non-compliance as bearing upon the viability of multilateral institutions like the U.N.
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In his task of making the arguments compelling, Powell veered close to the traps of
“conjunctive” diplomacy that plagued Clinton’s arguments.
32
His testimony
reconciled the epideictic rhetoric of crisis with the seemingly unrelated deliberative
arguments of U.N. Resolutions that supported multilateral conventions. Ultimately,
however, Powell returned to the discourse that carried the administration through its
campaign for war. Rather than risk further testing the inherent weaknesses of his
“pattern” of evidence against Hussein, Powell read the absence of proof of
disarmament as the presence of a case against Hussein. His final stretch of public
appearances only reiterated the consistent, self-referencing campaign of public
argument that had defined the administration’s campaign from the beginning.
Implications
The analysis in this dissertation represents a departure from previous rhetorical
studies dealing with crisis rhetoric and foreign policy. This dissertation hypothesized
that crisis rhetoric was central to a rhetorical movement; a rhetorical campaign
waged by multiple actors in an administration steering towards a radical foreign
policy change. The procedure of this study expanded the form of case study analysis
to examine public foreign policy arguments from an integrative perspective linking
together speeches and media coverage. This analytical move reflects the view that
foreign policy rhetoric can constitute a “web of advocacy” designed to cultivate the
legitimacy of a controversial foreign policy objective.
This study depicts presidential rhetoric as dependent on the sphere of
advisors acting in national media and offers a way to re-imagine the often-
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complicated relationship between foreign policy and media influence. Jim Kuypers’s
analysis of the media framing of President Clinton’s crisis rhetoric heralded the
possibilities for this kind of analysis, which more realistically embeds the practice of
administration rhetoric within a news media infrastructure.
33
Kuypers’s critique of
existing crisis rhetoric studies argued that they often ignored the interplay between
presidential rhetoric and contextual factors that sustained the efficacy of crisis
rhetoric:
[r]esearchers would be more productive of knowledge by examining
the interplay of various texts and contexts that act to alter the situation
and public perception of the situation. Thus, criticism of presidential
crisis rhetoric should be a blend of discursive and material
conditions.
34

This study applies his criticism to expand the definition of presidential rhetoric to
focus on the argument roles played by key presidential advisors, and their respective
presence in national media outlets. To focus solely on the President would ignore the
crucial arguments voiced by advisors that were timed to extend, defend, and amplify
the president’s objectives and leverage the unique rhetorical capacities each advisor
offered.
The “rhetorical movement” concept was deployed to chart the arguments of
these advisors and demonstrate the coherence of their foreign policy rhetorical
campaign. The drive toward war in Iraq required a series of moves that challenged
the status quo, across a series of actors. The findings of the analysis in this study
confirm that the essential qualities of crisis rhetoric were instrumental in bringing the
nation to war – but only to a certain point. The administration’s crisis rhetoric was
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effective in that it promoted a bounded range of terministic screens that
circumscribed foreign policy options, while coaching a general public attitude of
fear. The administration’s crisis rhetoric faltered when it could not provide specific,
factual claims to support its objectives. At those moments, the administration
cynically retreated to blatant misinformation. While crisis rhetoric may be effective
at challenging the status quo with a sense of urgency and imminence, public
arguments for war still require a semblance of deliberation.
This suggests that crisis rhetoric may be conducive to discursive projects as
epideictic reasoning. Bonnie Dow and Kathryn Olson have separately reached this
conclusion, and offer that some kind of deliberative intervention is necessary
translate discourse into policy, even if epideictic rhetoric masquerades as
deliberative.
35
The Bush administration’s extensive use of crisis rhetoric confirm this
observation, as it was forced to mount an public relations blitz in September of 2002
to clarify the case for war. Crisis redefines the international “scene,” but does not
necessitate a specific course of action. This does not leave much definitional clarity
for the genre. In fact, one could argue that the urgent tropes of crisis rhetoric
transcend most contexts of government advocacy.
Kuypers suggests that crisis rhetoric studies’ “trenchant contributions come
from their implied support for an interpretation of crisis as rhetorical
constructions.”
36
Richard Cherwitz and Kenneth Zagacki claim that, “events become
crises, not because of unique sets of situational exigencies, but by virtue of discourse
used to describe them.”
37
The entirety of prewar rhetorical campaign in 2002 can be
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described under this definition as an extension of the 9/11 catastrophe – as there was
no obvious sense of crisis stemming from Iraq until it was described as a threat
linked to 9/11. The lingering fallout of public anxiety after 9/11 was reinvigorated
and transformed by the administration arguing the imminent threat posed by an
armed Iraq. With each episode of alarmist presidential advisor rhetoric and dire
speculation, they leveraged the hypothetical dimension of crisis – with no actual
event to contextualize their claim.
The rhetorical movement sustained by Bush’s advisors reveals a progression
of crisis rhetoric to establish, over time, the justificatory warrants and grounds of the
“Bush Doctrine.” The orbit of arguments they assembled reinforced the
administration’s core objectives for war. In retrospect, however, this movement fell
short of being a strong analogy with the early days of the Cold War – because the
administration resorted to evidence fabrication to bridge the gap between its
ideological formation and mass public support. This does not mean that an attempt
was not made to reproduce such a grand discursive project. Wolfowitz advocated a
strategic doctrine that distilled U.S. foreign policy into a coherent, compelling vision
to banish the ambiguities of the Clinton era. Kuypers and Olson have each argued
that the absence of a contextual Cold War meta-narrative contributed the Clinton
administration’s failure to articulate a coherent policy “frame.” Therefore, crafting a
governing meta-narrative would be crucial to manage the post 9/11 policy discourse.
As Kane argued, “the legacy of the Cold war to create and sustain a rhetoric that was
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exaggerated, amplified, and cooptative all at the same time.”
38
The administration’s
movement rhetoric on Iraq reached for this kind of impact.
The Cold War rhetorical movement was diffuse and stretched out over a
course of years. Its imprint on public policy and popular culture radiated out over a
period much longer than Bush’s 18 month campaign - the time between 9/11 and
March 19, 2003. The phased public relations campaign behind the Bush
administration’s attempt to refashion U.S. foreign policy was quite compressed in
comparison. Nevertheless, the arc of public argument from Wolfowitz to Powell
displayed a remarkably consistent string of claims to heat up a rhetorically charged
sense of crisis. Ideographs of crisis stitched together a national constituency to make
the war appear a sensible course of action.
The terministic screens constructed by the movement did much to constrain
the United States’ ability to avoid war. The advisors’ relentless focus on Iraq’s
WMDs and the demonization of the regime’s character left little room to envision a
policy other than war. In this regard, this administration was successfully. By the
time Secretary Powell engaged the United Nations with for a new resolution in Iraq
the very language that had dominated discourse about Iraq for the previous year
constrained what he could reasonably concede to the Security Council. Robin Brown
has argued that Powell’s negotiations required a convoluted argument strategy to
reconcile the administration’s real objective of regime change with a resolution for
weapons inspections. The Bush administration was “rhetorically entrapped;” its
language committed itself to an inevitable policy conclusion.
39

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The ultimate failure of the rhetorical movement can be attributed to the
tactics of deception finally adopted by Vice President Cheney and Secretary Powell.
It “failed” because the administration felt it had to rely on false information to
overcome the final barriers to both elite and popular consensus. Crisis rhetoric had
successfully provided a scenic depiction, and also a basic consensus that action was
necessary. One could also argue that the doctrinal aspects of Wolfowitz’s morally-
inflected policies had gained a degree of national legitimacy. The advisors’ web of
advocacy had successfully leveraged the national media to adopt the administration’s
preferred framing of the Iraqi threat. Iraq would effectively become the “test” of the
emergent Bush doctrine with a wide swath of public support. Yet the foundation for
this legitimacy was shaky at best. The symbolic acts of deliberation, such as the
Congressional debates to authorize military action and the ensuing U.N. negotiations,
were based on false information and overshadowed by political posturing. The
administration’s “evidence” was couched in a thick array of crisis-laden speculation
about what Iraq might do, yet the incriminating evidence was still patently false.
These conditions rendered actual policy deliberation effectively absent. The
selective intelligence behind the administration’s “proof” of Iraqi threat, coupled
with the implicit discouraging of further policy deliberation in the rhetoric of
Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Powell made public participation in policy formation
decidedly symbolic. The talk show format, in particular, allowed the presidential
advisors to appear as if they were inclusive and engaged in providing a reasoned
position on Iraq. Such efforts at social persuasion appear, as G. Thomas Goodnight
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describes, “festooned with the trappings of deliberation, even while designed to
success by means inimical to knowledge choice and active participation.”
40
Advisors
used the talk show format to perform deliberation, rather than seriously engage in
actual deliberative argument.
The results of this study indicate a number of implications for the rhetorical
study of foreign policy rhetoric. This story complicates the notion of genre-based
study of crisis rhetoric. As Kuypers and Bostdorff both contend, crisis rhetoric often
transcends situational categorization. The case studied in this dissertation rather
suggests that crisis rhetoric works well to coach broad levels of public assent to
policy transformations. It links to the arguments advanced by Kathryn Olson about
the epideictic standard implicit in Bush’s policy arguments, demonstrating that a
campaign of crisis rhetoric may be measured by its ability to effectively coach an
epideictic reasoning that calls into being the collective we to defend the nation. The
concern of argument scholars about the lack of evidence-based reasoning in the Bush
administration’s pre-Iraq war rhetoric is mitigated when such arguments are viewed
as a project to define a domestic polity, and not deliberate the merits of the war.
41

Future studies of crisis rhetoric, therefore, should consider its function as a
species of public reasoning, to elaborate more fully its generic qualities. At the same
time, crisis rhetoric employed over time through a campaign also should reveal
elements of discursive consistency – an argument vocabulary that is central to the
worldview implicit in the broader goals of the campaign. Viewing crisis rhetoric in
this way elevates it from simply an aspect or tactic of presidential rhetoric to
297

consolidate political authority in a given moment. Crisis rhetoric in the view
proposed in this dissertation offers a critical standpoint to analyze arguments made
over time and linked into fundamental policy goals. The more obvious conclusion
that a sense of crisis is rhetorically constructed fades behind the greater implication
that crisis animates foreign policy shifts that require major popular support and a
rhetorical movement to support.
The case of crisis rhetoric and presidential advisors also demonstrates the
conceptual viability of “rhetorical movements” as engaged by government elites.
Studies of rhetorical movements can further expand the avenues of inquiry for
existing trends in constructivist foreign policy analysis.
42
Rhetorical movements
provide a way to observe the links between popular and institutional belief about
foreign policy and how normative conceptions of such policies develop. The
campaign for war in Iraq began by coaching “meaning” for international relations at
a very basic level, and proceeded to inflate a sense of threat to connect the
ideological framework of the neo-conservatives to the imminent reality of danger
imposed by Iraq. Understanding how a movement works, however, means
understanding what social movement scholar Sydney Tarrow referred to as the
“opportunity structures” through which they gain widespread legitimacy and political
success.
43

The most obvious of such structures in the contemporary United States
political climate is the communication infrastructure - the media system of national
and local affiliates that afford wide exposure to government officials on talk-shows
298

and news-programs. Rhetorical movement scholarship cannot ignore the capacity of
news media to distribute and reinforce the framing of key issues central to the
movement’s objectives. This study has examined how presidential advisors leverage
media outlets. Their appearances on television programs signal the intentions of the
administration, as well as how an administration is reacting to perceived changes in
the political climate.
Finally, the involvement of advisors in the Bush administration’s rhetorical
movement suggests a complicated division of roles within foreign policy institutions.
The history of prewar Iraq may have offered a somewhat unique level of
involvement by advisors, but the history of the Cold War suggests that such activity
is not unprecedented. Presidential advisors need to be considered by scholars as more
central to the rhetorical legacy of administrations. The clearly vital contributions of
the “Vulcan” advisors during the administration of George W. Bush merit the future
application of this perspective for the rhetorical study of policy development and
promotion.
Conclusion
A core objective of this study is to provide an alternative analysis of international
crisis rhetoric that did not replicate the methods of previous case-based scholarship.
This study was influenced heavily by the work of Denise Bostdorff and Jim Kuypers,
as well as the wealth of recent historical accounts of the Bush administration’s
contentious campaign to sell the United States on a preventive war against Iraq. The
conclusions reached by this analysis are straightforward. First, a rhetorical
299

movement incorporated key advisors to shore up and defend the Iraq policy across
time. Its actors wove together a body of rhetoric that legitimated both the war itself
and a policy logic that justified the war. Second, it is clear that crisis rhetoric was
crucial to this movement. Crisis rhetoric was also demonstrated to be a complicated
genre of argument that required various argument strategies to sustain. The case of
the Iraq war campaign reveals a movement founded in crisis that ultimately was
limited by its lack of deliberative discourse. The movement rested finally on blatant
deception. These conclusions lead to the following final thoughts:
The bellicose, alarmist rhetoric that lead up to the 2003 war in Iraq was
nearly uncontested in the U.S. public sphere despite no sign of imminent hostility
from Iraq. Perhaps this aspect of the campaign reveals the most instructive analogy
with the formative Cold War rhetoric. For Robert Messer, the Cold War was “an
essentially nonevent” that was “by definition an abstraction, a subjective process of
changed perceptions, expectations, goals, and means.”
44
The scenic calculus
provided by the Bush administration is similar, offering few concrete details about a
supposedly impending threat that would merit a real crisis. Instead, presidential
advisors expounded upon what Messer described for the Cold War as a “[c]oherent
and inclusive vocabulary in order to promote a variety of security concerns,
economic interests, self images, domestic political issues, and personal ambitions.”
45

The summation of the rhetorical campaign amounted an exercise in political
manipulation that allowed little opportunity for actual policy deliberation. Crisis
300

rhetoric was deployed in a campaign that built up a sense of national responsibility,
an epidictic exercise that did not engage the specific details of war too closely.
The ironic lesson of this rhetorical movement is that it capitalized on
epideictic exhortations of self-importance and civilizational superiority. An
aggressive, interventionist military policy was necessary to forestall threats to the
virtues of democracy itself. As the administration symbolically conjoined Iraq into
the greater sphere of threat posed by international terrorism, Iraq became a symbolic
container for the fears such terrorism created. In other words, it became an easy
target to be exploited by the aggressive policy entrepreneurs behind the war. To
wage such a rhetorical movement, however, meant to subvert the very principals
lauded by the war advocates. Government stewardship of foreign policy deliberation
and close analysis were lost amidst a consistent hyperbole of breathless threat
inflation and a world-view composed of dire speculation. Thomas Kane quoted a
statement by Archibald MacLeish in 1949 to show the dangers that such rhetoric
posed at the dawn of the Cold War: “we lost our way as a people, and wandered into
the Russian looking-glass, primarily because we were unable to think.”
46
As James
Klumpp has argued, it is crucial for future efforts at argument scholarship to engage
in public argument analysis that can intervene in such miscarriages of public
debate.
47
Given the tremendous costs already incurred during the second Iraq war, it
is clear the stakes are too high for the consequences of foreign policy crisis rhetoric
to be ignored.

301

Chapter 6 Endnotes

1
James Klumpp, “Facts, Truth, and Iraq: A Call to Stewardship of Democratic
Argument,” in Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 14
th
Biennial
NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley (Washington, DC:
National Communication Association, 2005), 4.

2
Chaim Kauffman, “Threat Inflation and the Marketplace of ideas: The Selling of
the War in Iraq.” International Security 29, no.1 (2004): 6.

3
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11
Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric.” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3,
(2005): 525-37.

4
Joseph Cirincione, Jessica T. Mathews, and George Perkovich, with Alexis Orton,
WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications (New York: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, January 2004).

5
Denise M. Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994).

6
Bonnie J. Dow, "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in
Presidential Crisis Rhetoric," Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989):
294-310.

7
Celeste Condit, “The Functions of Epideictic: The Boston Massacre Orations as
Exemplar,” Communication Quarterly 33, (1985): 33.

8
Kathryn Olson, "The Epideictic Lens: The Unrealized Potential of Existing
Argumentation Theory to Explain the Bush Administration's Presentation of War in
Iraq," in Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 14
th
Biennial NCA/AFA
Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley (Washington, DC: National
Communication Association, 2005).

9
Theodore O. Windt Jr., "The Presidency and Speeches on International
Crises: Repeating the Rhetorical Past," Speaker and Gavel 2, no. 1, (1973): 6-14.

10
Amos Kiewe, ed., The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1994).

11
Thomas Kane, "Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas."
Argumentation and Advocacy 28 (1991): 80-90.

302

12
Denise M. Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises.

13
Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 45.

14
Kiewe, The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, xix.

15
See Denise Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crises; Lynn
Hinds and Theodore Windt, The Cold war as Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945-1950,
(New York: Praeger, 1991); Ernest Bormann, John Cragan, and Donald Shields, “An
Expansion of the Rhetorical Vision Component of the Symbolic Convergence
Theory: The Cold War Paradigm case,” Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 1-
28. For the interaction of multiple actors to a influence policy shift, see Jerry
Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis, (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1983) and Anne
Hessing Cahn, Killing Détente: The Right attacks the CIA, (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvannia State Press, 1998); Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American
Crusade against the Soviet Union (Washington Square, NY: New York University
Press, 1999).

16
David Zarefsky, "President Johnson's War on Poverty: The Rhetoric of Three
"Establishment" Movements," Communication Monographs 44 (1977): 353-373.

17
Kathryn M. Olson, "Democrat Enlargement's Value Hierarchy and Rhetorical
Forms: An Analysis of Clinton's Use of Post-War Symbolic Frame to Justify
Military Interventions," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2004): 307-40.

18
Karolyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Deeds done in words:
Presidential rhetoric and the genres of governance (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1990), 105.

19
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984), 76.

20
Richard Cheney quoted in Dana Milbank, “Back in Public Eye, Cheney Visits
Marines;
Trip to California Kicks Off Busy Year of Political, Diplomatic Events,” Washington
Post, February 19, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

21
Richard Cheney, Meet the Press with Tim Russert, May 19,2002, http://web.lexis-
nexis.com/universe.

303

22
David Zarefsky, "President Johnson's War on Poverty,” 353.

23
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion.”

24
“U.S. Vice President Cheney Backs Military Action to Oust Iraqi President
Hussein,” Facts on File, August 21, 2002,
http://www.2facts.com/stories/index/2002259570.asp.

25
Rodger Payne, “Deliberate before striking first?” in Hitting First: Preventive
Force in U.S. Security Strategy, ed. William Keller and Gordon Mitchell (Pittsburg:
University of Pittsburg Press, 2006), 162.

26
Steven Weisman and Julia Preston, “Threats and Responses: Inspections;
Powell Says Iraq Raises Risk of War by Lying on Arms,” New York Times,
December 20, 2002, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

27
Robin Brown, “Getting to War: Communications and Mobilization in the 2002-03
Iraq Crisis.” in Media and Conflict in the Twenty First Century, ed. Phillip Seib
(New York: Palgrave, 2005).

28
Colin Powell, “Interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell,” ABC This Week
February 9, 2003, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

29
Ibid.

24
Author Unknown, “Powell Calls Pre-Iraq U.N. Speech a 'Blot' on His Record”
USA Today, September 8, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-
09-08-powell-iraq_x.htm.

25
Larry Wilkerson, “The White House Cabal,” Los Angeles Times, October 25,
2005, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe.

26
See Olson, “Democratic Enlargement's Value Hierarchy and Rhetorical Forms.”

33
Jim A. Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric and the Press in the Post-Cold War
World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997).

34
Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric, 28.

304

35
Bonnie Dow, "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in
Presidential Crisis Rhetoric." Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989):
294-310; Kathryn Olson, The Epideictic Lens: The Unrealized Potential of Existing
Argumentation Theory to Explain the Bush Administration's Presentation of War in
Iraq," in Engaging Argument: Selected Papers from the 14
th
Biennial NCA/AFA
Conference on Argumentation, ed. Patricia Riley (Washington, DC: National
Communication Association, 2005).

36
Kuypers, Presidential Crisis Rhetoric, 27.

37
Richard A. Cherwitz and Kenneth S. Zagacki, "Consummatory Versus
Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric", Western Journal of Speech Communication 50
(1986): 307.

38
Kane, “Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas,” 83.

39
Brown, “Getting to War: Communications and Mobilization in the 2002-03 Iraq
Crisis.”

40
G. Thomas Goodnight, “The Personal, the Technical, and Public Spheres of
Argument: A Speculative Inquiry in the Art of Public Deliberation,” Journal of the
American Forensic Association 18 (1982): 215.

41
See James Klumpp, “Facts, Truth, and Iraq: A Call to Stewardship of Democratic
Argument.”

42
See Jamie Gaskarth, “Discourse and Ethics: The Social Construction of British
Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy Analysis 2, no. 4, (2006): 325-341; Steve Smith,
“Foreign Policy is What States make of it: Social Construction and International
Relations Theory,” in Foreign Policy in a Constructed World, ed. Kubalkova
Vendulka (New York: ME Sharpe, 2001).; Jutta Weldes, Constructing National
Interests: The US and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999); Francois Debrix, "Language as Criticism: Assessing the
Merits of Speech Acts and Discursive Formations in International Relations," New
Political Science 24, no. 2 (2002): 201-19, Valerie Hudson, "Cultural Expectations
of One’s Own and Other Nations’ Foreign Policy Action
Templates," Political Psychology 20 (1999): 767-802.

43
Sydney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 18. See also Charles Tilly, From
Mobilization to Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978).

305

44
Robert L. Messer, The End of An Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman
and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1982), 187.

45
Ibid.

46
Archibald MacLeish, “The Conquest of America,” Atlantic (August 1949): 17-22,
quoted in Kane, “Foreign Policy Suppositions and Commanding Ideas,” 82.

47
James Klumpp, “Facts, Truth, and Iraq: A Call to Stewardship of Democratic
Argument.”
306
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Asset Metadata

Creator Hayden, Craig Arthur (author)

Core Title The Vulcan rhetoric of crisis: presidential advisors and the War in Iraq

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 04/20/2007

Defense Date 01/18/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag crisis rhetoric,OAI-PMH Harvest,presidential advisors,rhetorical movement

Language English

Advisor Goodnight, G. Thomas (committee chair), Hollihan, Thomas (committee member), Lamy, Steven (committee member)

Creator Email hayden@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m431

Unique identifier UC1450793

Identifier etd-Hayden-20070420 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-500837 (legacy record id),usctheses-m431 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Hayden-20070420.pdf

Dmrecord 500837

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Hayden, Craig Arthur

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu