I read Irene as meaning that Bush ramped up public (and Congressional/Senatorial) support for the war on Iraq by manipulating peoples' emotions of fear and patriotism. He hyped the non-existent threat until damned near the whole country was chanting, "Get Sadaam before he gets us again!". America as a whole (big brush, I know) seemed to support the war initially not for rational or logical reasons, (is "rational reason" redundant or what?) but out of pure emotion. It's not unlikely that before his term is up he's hell-bent on ramping up a support for a strike in Iran by hyping emotions similarly. People in general respond more quickly to emotion than reason. Julie Krueger entirely possibly wrong ========Original Message======== Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: The Iran Charade Date: 1/18/06 8:25:29 PM Central Standard Time From: _atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) Sent on: AA: > People don't learn from experience surely some people do. > and they don't think anything through. surely some people do. > Emotions got us into Iraq, now they're > emotionalizing about Iran. Who's the they "emotionalizing" about Iran? What does that even mean? And how do you know that? If you mean to argue that this administration decided to invade Iraq for emotional reasons, I have to strongly disagree with you. To the contrary, I'd say hard, cold, unemotional thinking about oil and power got us into Iraq and is currently being applied to Iran. The people opposed to the war are the ones emotionalizing -- or, as I perfer, integrating their emotions into their thinking -- not the goddamn Bush militarists. Mike Geary Memphis ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html