ON the home front, raising the specter of homosexuality and gay marriage has been an extraordinarily effective means for George Bush to energize his extremist right wing religious base-- the primary core of his remaining support. He's been going after these sodomists for as long as he's been in office, and it's been a reliable strategy for recruiting his people.
Now Bush has reframed the enemy in Iraq, again, describing them as Saddamist. Is it ironic that the term is similar to one describing homosexuals? It may be merely a coincidence. But it's no accident that he has built the word Saddam into his newest incarnation of an explanation for why we are at war.
He originally based his argument for going to war on the danger and threat of Saddam. Saddam possessed and would use WMDs. Then, he justified that it was worth going to war to get rid of the horrible person Saddam was. Cheney still talks about Saddam's threat and his WMDs.
"We're fighting Saddamists."
IN this newest chapter in the Bush "Why I Started the War" story game, Bush has invented a way to keep Saddam and Bush's lies, deceptions and frauds IN the conversation about the war. It's a framing strategy that is really quite brilliant. The content of the word is about Iraqi war combatants, and its about getting rid of Saddam, about Saddam's WMDs and subliminally, it's about homophobia.
That makes it another Bush Trifecta. It delivers a message that evokes knee jerk reactions to homosexuality and to all the fraudulently programmed fear responses to WMDs, Saddam, etc.
It will be interesting to see which news media adopt this propagandist reframe that sells Bush's trifecta so neatly.
