THE WHITE HOUSE'S FEAR FACTORY
Interview With Congressman Jim McDermott
by BuzzFlash.com

The way you describe it in the American Prospect commentary is: "Here's how it works: Throw a hundred claims against the wall and poll every night to see what sticks. Leak stories that are later discredited. Get a graduate student's dissertation and plagiarize it. Lift paragraphs from a war-industry magazine. Every so often, raise the danger level to code "yellow" or "orange." Give the people a rest. Then start all over again. Mix it all up and put an official seal on it. Now it seems true, despite the skepticism of intelligence professionals." And the majority of Americans did believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And the majority of Americans thought that there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. In short, the Bush administration had convinced the American public that Iraq was a direct and immediate threat to the security of the United States. What can we, as citizens, do about that? As Americans, we want to look to the White House for leadership, and if we’re being constantly -- like a monkey in an experiment -- being given a jolt of electricity in the form of fear, what can we do?
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