Why we must attack Iraq: Bush's reasoning practices and argumentation system

Abstract

This three-part article describes the reasoning practices and argumentation system deployed by the Bush administration to build a case for the war on Iraq initiated in 2003. First, it analyzes the elaborate description of Saddam Hussein's evil character presented by the Bush administration and the political implications that followed from it. Then, it analyzes the methods by which these understandings were utilized to argue that Saddam Hussein's regime (1) possessed weapons of mass destruction and (2) had collaborative relationships with terrorists, including al-Qaeda. Last, it explains how the Bush administration creatively used event-sequencing strategies and syntactical formations to help forward their accusations in public against opponents who argued that the Bush administration had lacked evidence for its claims. The overall analysis demonstrates that an argumentation system was built through a dialectical process whereby one way of speaking, thinking, and acting helped to legitimize and `afford' subsequent ones.