Committee:
Thomas Goodnight (chair)
Thomas Hollihan, Steven Lamy

Dissertation Title:
Vulcan Rhetoric of Crisis: The Campaign for War in Iraq

ABSTRACT:

The dissertation studies the role of presidential advisers in sustaining the presidential administration's rhetorical campaign leading up to the war in Iraq in March of 2003. The dissertation investigates the use of crisis rhetoric deployed in a "rhetorical movement" to extend, defend, and amplify the foreign policy arguments made by the President. The study examines representative episodes of public address and media appearances by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for the period of June 2001 to March of 2003. Their statements illustrate how a campaign of crisis rhetoric, in conjunction with sympathetic media coverage, shaped the ideational grounds used in arguments for war, contributed to threat inflation, and solidified the legitimacy of a military intervention in Iraq.