rhetoric, claiming that the attack on Iraq is part of a campaign against .

             "international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, .

             organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the .

             terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." Certainly, Bush's .

             statements are at least partially responsible for the persistent public .

             misperception that Iraq and Saddam were involved in the September 11th .

             attacks.

             Repetitive use of the word "Freedom", or some derivative, is at the root of today's political war rhetoric. Bush and others insist for example: "Freedom will prevail". After all, "America is a democracy", and therefore (as if these two ideas were related) "we who love freedom must not give in to those who would threaten our way of life" [who are, by the way, terrorists like Osama bin Laden, not the Iraqis]. In that same vein, our current, stubbornly pseudo-patriotic cultural narrative, delivered often by those who favor the war, is that we must "stay the course". .

             Within today's frothy and deceptive rhetoric, even capitalization of words or phrases not capitalized before the September 11, 2001 attacks, e.g., "War on Terrorism"; "Axis of Evil"; "America's City" [post-9-11 New York]; and "America's Mayor" (then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani), insist on their own embedded truthfulness, like bold headlines or huge billboards. Many (understandably) have come to now regard these as "truths" about who to look up to; who to dislike or distrust; who and what to believe. .

             Hoffman observes that a frequent Bush post-911 tactic has been to:.

             . . . resort to Orwellian rhetoric. The President told Americans that the war .

             was not a policy chosen among others, but a necessity imposed by Saddam. .

             Nations that resisted the administration's rush to war were presented as .

             hostile for reasons of greed or of an incurable anti-Americanism.