Abstract

This essay offers a dilemma-centered rhetorical history of the Iraq debacle, beginning with the president's melodramatic crisis narrative in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, continuing with the unraveling of that narrative in the run-up to war and during the prolonged occupation of Iraq, and culminating in situational entrapment, or quagmire, wherein the Bush administration's reputation for "staying on message" has lost its rhetorical glow.

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