Shocked and Awed: The Convergence of Military and Media Discourse James R. Compton, Ph.D. University of Western Ontario
[email protected] Submitted to International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Political Economy Section Communication and Democracy: Challenges for a New World Porto Alegre, Brazil July 25-30, 2004 More than one year after the United States military occupation of Iraq there still is no credible evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, nor is there any trace of the Middle Eastern dictator’s ballyhooed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program. These stubborn facts notwithstanding, and in the face of opinion polls that indicate public support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had slipped, U.S. President George W. Bush and other members of his administration continued to reassert the same dubious claims that helped them win over American public opinion in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” Bush said after a cabinet meeting June 17 (Milbank 2004). In a New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted over the weeks leading up to the invasion, 45 percent of respondents said Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the attacks. A second poll, conducted before the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, found the number had increased. The Washington Post poll reported that nearly 7 in 10 respondents thought Hussein was involved in the attacks—a troublesome figure considering there is no evidence to support the opinion.