A drumbeat of fear.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

When the leaders speak of peace The common folk know That war is coming. When the leaders curse war The mobilization order is already written out.

--Brecht, Bertolt

As George W. Bush prepared to plunge the United States into war against Iraq, he used rhetoric in a highly manipulative way.

In his March 6 press conference, President Bush made no new arguments for war against Iraq. Instead, he simply used a drumbeat to scare the American people. At least sixteen times, he referred to Iraq as a "threat." And at least nine times, he mentioned September 11 or the loss of 3,000 Americans on that date, though there is no credible evidence that Iraq had anything to do with those attacks. For months, Bush has been trying to glue the beard of Osama bin Laden onto the chin of Saddam Hussein, but the beard won't stick.

Bush can't come out and say he favors war. That would be impolitic. "I don't like war," he said at the press conference. But we will go to war, he said, "for the sake of peace" or "in the name of peace."

Bush dressed up his warmongering in constitutional garb. "I swore to protect and defend the Constitution; that's what I swore to do. I put my hand on the Bible and took that oath," he said.

But he is not upholding that oath.

He has usurped Congress's sole power to declare war, and he is not seeing that "the laws are faithfully executed." The United States signed the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Senate approved it back in 1945. According to Article VI of the Constitution, treaties are "the supreme law of the land." Bush is blatantly violating the Constitution by trashing the United Nations.

More than thirty times in the last seven months, Bush has used an odd phrase about our oceans to describe America the vulnerable.

Speaking to a conference of religious broadcasters in Nashville on February 10, he said: "Before September the...