Bushspeak and the Politics of Lying: Presidential Rhetoric in the “War on Terror”

The Bush administration, aided and abetted by U.S. corporate media, manipulated a politics of fear to push through a right‐wing agenda that included the Patriot Act, massive changes in the legal system, a dramatic expansion of the U.S. military, and U.S.‐led military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. Accordingly, I dissect Bush‐Cheney administration rhetoric in the period following the 9/11 terror attacks, George W. Bush's “axis of evil” speech and the lead‐up to the Iraq War, and the discourse and spectacle of the war itself. Building on George Orwell, I deconstruct Bush's rhetoric as an instrument of “Bushspeak” and the politics of lying. I argue that subsequent events in Iraq deconstructed Bush's discourse and showed the dangers and limitations of the politics of lying and of the spectacle, which can be reversed and undermined by subsequent events.