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Abstract
Expressions of time have increasingly infused the rhetorical experience of post-industrial war, especially since 9/11. This essay demonstrates how these “signs of time” operate as one of three tropes: deadline/countdown, infinite/infinitesimal war, and the ticking clock. The persistence of such signs of time in public discourse can be seen as an expression of what Paul Virilio has called the “chronopolis,” a political universe textured by real-time communication technologies. The chronopolitical will exhibits certain autocratic traits at odds with democratic ideals, primarily the refashioning of citizen identity into that of the “contemporary.” The analysis here charts the autocratic rhetoric of the chronopolis as a critical democratic project.
Versions of this essay have been presented at Lewis and Clark College, the Political Communication Speaker Series at the University of Delaware, the Speech Communication Colloquium Series at the University of Georgia, and the National Communication Association annual convention in 2007.
Versions of this essay have been presented at Lewis and Clark College, the Political Communication Speaker Series at the University of Delaware, the Speech Communication Colloquium Series at the University of Georgia, and the National Communication Association annual convention in 2007.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Michael Wagner and G. Mitchell Reyes for their direction, John Lucaites and Melanie Loehwing for their editorial expertise, and Pat Gehrke for planting the initial seed of this essay.
Notes
Versions of this essay have been presented at Lewis and Clark College, the Political Communication Speaker Series at the University of Delaware, the Speech Communication Colloquium Series at the University of Georgia, and the National Communication Association annual convention in 2007.
1. Jeremy Rifkin, Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History, 1st Touchstone ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 10.
2. William J. Small, “The Gulf War: Mass Media Coverage and Restraints,” in The 1,000 Hour War: Communication in the Gulf, ed. Thomas A. McCain and Leonard Shyles (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 3.
3. Jean Baudrillard makes the case that Operation Desert Storm was only a “war” in simulacrum. See Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans. Paul Patton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). See also Noam Chomsky, “The Media and the War: What War?” in Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in the Persian Gulf – A Global Perspective, ed. George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana, and Herbert I. Schiller (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 51–63.
4. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn't Take a Hero (New York: Bantam, 1992), 470.
5. Schwarzkopf, Doesn't Take a Hero, 470.
6. Bosah Ebo takes this episode to be part of the overall packaging of the war in accordance with the conventions of televised entertainment. Bosah Ebo, “War as Popular Culture: The Gulf Conflict and the Technology of Illusionary Entertainment,” Journal of American Culture 18 (1995): 23.
7. Robert Hariman, “Time and the Reconstitution of Gradualism in King's Address: A Response to Cox,” in Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric, ed. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1989), 205. Michael Leff points out that the relationship between time and rhetoric has “played a persistent and crucial role in the history of our discipline” extending back to the Cornell school's attempts to carve out a space for the study of oratory. Michael Leff, “Textual Criticism: The Legacy of G.P. Mohrmann,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 383.
8. See, in particular, Debra Hawhee, “Kairotic Encounters,” in Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention, ed. Janet M. Atwill and Janice M. Lauer (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 16–35. See also John Poulakos, “Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 16 (1983): 35–48. A number of scholars have explored the various ways in which rhetors play to the flow of external time and events. See, for example, Edwin Black, “Electing Time,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59 (1973): 125–9; Barbara A. Larson, “The Election Eve Address of Edmund Muskie,” Central States Speech Journal 23 (1972): 78–85; Bruce E. Gronbeck, “Rhetorical Timing in Public Communication,” Central States Speech Journal 25 (1974): 84–94. Thomas B. Farrell extends this notion to decenter the rhetor within a cascading historical succession of discursive acts. See Thomas B. Farrell, “Knowledge in Time: Toward an Extension of Rhetorical Form,” in Advances in Argumentation Theory and Research, ed. J. Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 123–53. Bitzer's foundational notion of the “exigence” harbors a strong temporal component: an “imperfection marked by urgency.” Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 6.
9. Michael Leff, for example, emphasizes that each speech text contains its own internal “pattern of utterance.” Leff, “Textual Criticism,” 385. See also Michael Leff, “Dimensions of Temporality in Lincoln's Second Inaugural,” Communication Reports 1 (1988): 26–31. A text's dispositio and use of tense can subtly perform its own underpinning ideology with urgency, patience, or a sense of “what's done is done.” Celeste Michelle Condit, “Nixon's ‘Fund’: Time as Ideological Resource in the ‘Checkers’ Speech,” in Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric, ed. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld (Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1989), 219–41. J. Robert Cox, “The Fulfillment of Time: King's ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech (August 23, 1963),” in Texts in Context, 181–204.
10. Richard Vatz's critique of Bitzer implies that any temporality invoked in the “exigence” must itself be a rhetorical effect. Richard E. Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6 (1973): 154–61. Apocalyptic rhetoric is perhaps the starkest genre of temporal narrativization with its sense of impending historic peripety. For example, see Barry Brummett, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (New York: Praeger, 1991). For use of time in generating irony, see Robert E. Terrill, “Irony, Silence, and Time: Frederick Douglass on the Fifth of July,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 216–34. Scholars working in the burgeoning field of public memory have made it their task to understand how collectivities rhetorically condition the present through commemorations of the past. This literature is vast, but there is a representative collection in Kendall R. Phillips, ed., Framing Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004).
11. Goodnight's example is the public time invoked by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, an important text in the early environmental movement. Carson constructs an emergency-oriented public time that must deal with the relatively rapid changes that humans have occasioned in long-term evolutionary processes. G. Thomas Goodnight, “Public Discourse,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4 (1987): 430.
12. In his analysis of one of the most significant rhetorical moments in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 address to the UN Security Council, David Zarefsky finds that the mainstay argument was an “argument from ignorance” fallacy and that Powell's evidence did not hold water. David Zarefsky, “Making the Case for War: Colin Powell at the United Nations,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10 (2007): 275–302. The implication of such an analysis is that logical soundness alone cannot account for the effective success of Powell's speech. Certain discourses of time might account for the subsequent spike in public support for the invasion. Indeed, a rhetoric of impatience thoroughly infused and perhaps even constituted the thrust of the speech:
The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: “Enough. Enough.”
Colin Powell, “U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council,” February 5, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html. Administration rhetoric in general suffered from a pronounced irrationality, such that it spawned a cottage industry of rational refutations. See David Corn, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception, 1st ed. (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003); Joseph C. Wilson, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity, A Diplomat's Memoir (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2004); Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (New York: Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press, 2003).
13. Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American Journal of Sociology 46 (1941): 455–68.
14. For updates on the garrison hypothesis, see Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State Hypothesis Today,” in Changing Patterns of Military Politics, ed. Samuel Huntington (New York: Free Press, 1962), 51–70. For reactions to improvements on Lasswell's ideas, see Vernon Dibble, “The Garrison Society,” New University Thought 5 (1966–67): 106–15; Samuel J. Fitch, “The Garrison State in America: A Content Analysis of Trends in the Expectation of Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 22 (1985): 31–45.
15. In order to preserve its shelf life, footage typically had a generic quality. Heavy equipment also put distance between reporters and battle. William M. Hammond, “The Press in Vietnam as Agent of Defeat: A Critical Examination,” Reviews in American History 17 (1989): 315.
16. Longer-term trends have increasingly concentrated rhetorical power on the executive. See Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Carole Winkler argues that the ascendance of terrorism to a central place in American discourse goes hand in hand with the increase in executive power. See Carol K. Winkler, In the Name of Terrorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the Post-World War II Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 4–7.
17. Andrew Hoskins, Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq (New York: Continuum, 2004), 48.
18. Andrew Hoskins, Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq (New York: Continuum, 2004), 49.
19. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1st MIT Press ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 9. The light bulb illustrates the idea of “medium as message” most purely. Here, the structural presence of the cathode ray is a social schema whose “meaning” runs prior to the images flickering on its screen.
20. Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose (New York: Verso, 1997), 69.
21. See Piers Robinson, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy, and Intervention (New York: Routledge, 2002). See also Steven Livingston, Clarifying the CNN Effect: An Examination of Media Effects According to Type of Military Intervention (Cambridge, MA: Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1997).
22. Virilio, Open Sky, 70.
23. Virilio, Open Sky, 74; emphasis in the original.
24. Debord writes:
The society whose modernization has reached the stage of the integrated spectacle is characterized by the combined effect of five principal features: incessant technological renewal; integration of state and economy; generalized secrecy, unanswerable lies; an eternal present.
Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, trans. Malcolm Imrie (New York: Verso, 1990), 11–12.
25. Virilio, Open Sky, 122.
26. George Gerbner, “Persian Gulf War, the Movie,” in Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in the Persian Gulf—a Global Perspective, ed. Hamid Mowlana, George Gerbner, and Herbert I. Schiller (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 244.
27. See Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Terence Kilmartin (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959).
28. Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, trans. Mark Polizzotti (New York: Semiotext(e), 1986), 18.
29. “Territorialization” is a term coined by Virilio and later elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
30. Virilio calls this loss of spatial recognition the “negative horizon.” See Paul Virilio, Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy, trans. Michael Degener (New York: Continuum, 2005). The essence of this chronopolitical body was captured in a Microsoft slogan referring to the Internet near the turn of the twenty-first century: “Where do you want to go today?”
31. David Gross, Lost Time: On Remembering and Forgetting in Late Modern Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 118–32. Virilio, Open Sky, 74.
32. Virilio, Open Sky, 18.
33. See Kevin Michael Deluca and Jennifer Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 125–51; Kevin Michael Deluca, Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York: Guilford Press, 1999).
34. Paul Virilio, Desert Screen: War at the Speed of Light, trans. Michael Degener (New York: Continuum, 2002), 14.
35. The concept of an “attention economy” has been around since the 1970s, but it has gained interest in the new century. For a humanistic treatment of the role of attention in media flows, see Richard A. Lanham, The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). The politics of attention have also been influential in marketing and business. See Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2001).
36. Virilio, Desert Screen, 22.
37. Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Pure War (New York: Semiotext(e), 1997).
38. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 41.
39. Virilio, Desert Screen, 43.
40. Virilio, Desert Screen, 134.
41. Virilio, Desert Screen, 53. This idolatry of speed was featured, for example, in the U.S. Navy's recruiting campaign introduced in 2001, “Accelerate Your Life”; the main plotline was a worship of weapons.
42. Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, shortly after 9/11, responded to Mahmoud Ahmed, the head of Pakistani intelligence, who said there was “much history” between Pakistan and the Afghani Taliban to consider. Patrick Smyth, “Looking Over Powell's Shoulder with Unease,” Irish Times, September 29, 2001, 12, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
43. Thomas Donnelly, Donald Kagen, and Gary Schmitt, “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century,” Project for the New American Century, http://www.newamericancentury.org/rebuildingamericasdefenses.pdf. See also Donald Rumsfeld, “2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” Department of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/qdr/report/report20060203.pdf.
44. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
45. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 257–8.
46. George W. Bush, “Address to the Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” September 20, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.
47. George W. Bush, Our Mission and Our Moment: Speeches since the Attacks of September 11 (Washington, DC: White House, 2001).
48. In remembrance of 9/11 one year after the events, for example, CNN told the story of Flight 93, which crashed into the Pennsylvania field. The transcript of the story reads like a ticking clock, with every sentence granted a time signature. See Paula Zahn, Miles O'Brien, and Aaron Brown, “What Really Happened to Flight 93,” CNN, September 11, 2002, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
49. Dan Rather, “Introduction,” in What We Saw, ed. CBS News (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 9.
50. Roger Ebert, “Ovation for Moore's ‘Fahrenheit’ Lasts Longer than Bush Dawdled,” Chicago Sun-Times, May 19, 2004, 70, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
51. Lester Holt, “Countdown Iraq for March 19, 2003,” MSNBC, March 19, 2003, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
52. We can find a striking analogy to the infinite/infinitesimal war in the structure of asymmetrical warfare. On the one hand is the immovable object of the U.S. military machine, whose regular budget in 2005 was 48% of total world spending, and whose 2006 budget was projected to eclipse the rest of the world's military spending combined. See “2006 Yearbook,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, http://yearbook2006.sipri.org (accessed August 5, 2007). On the other hand is the unstoppable force of the suicide bomber, whose very body is destroyed in the triggering of invisible or unforeseen weapons. As the military juggernaut approaches the infinite (or at least the unchallengeable), the suicide bomber approaches disappearance altogether.
53. John Henley et al., “Saddam ‘To Get 7 Days to Open Sites’,” The Guardian, September 28, 2002, 1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
54. For the conditions of the resolution, see “Under the Gun: Deadlines for Saddam,” The Boston Herald, November 9, 2003, 3, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
55. James Harding and Mark Turner, “Divisions Boil Down to Question of Timing,” Financial Times, February 18, 2003, 12, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
56. Kenneth R. Bazinet, “U.S. Counting to 10 on Iraq March 17 Deadline for Saddam,” New York Daily News, March 8, 2003, 5, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
57. Robert Lusetich, “Get Off the Fence, Orders Bush—Embattled Blair Seeks Extended Deadline for Saddam,” The Australian, March 13, 2003, 1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/
58. “President Bush: Monday ‘Moment of Truth’ for World on Iraq,” White House Press Release, March 16, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030316-3.html.
59. See George W. Bush, “President Says Saddam Hussein Must Leave Iraq within 48 Hours: Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation,” March 17, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html. This phrase became the title of an Operation Iraqi Freedom retrospective. See Todd S. Purdum, A Time of Our Choosing: America's War in Iraq (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2003).
60. Small, “Gulf War,” 4.
61. The rhetoric of inevitability is also represented by the Bush administration's consistent reference to the virtuous “American resolve,” a feature that appeared on September 11 and accompanied presidential rhetoric throughout the War on Terror. See George W. Bush, “Statement by the President in his Address to the Nation,” September 11, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-16.html (accessed August 5, 2007).
62. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 177–82.
63. Virilio, Desert Screen, 37–8.
64. Vice President Dick Cheney, October 19, 2001. See Bob Woodward, “CIA Told to Do ‘Whatever Necessary’ to Kill Bin Laden; Agency and Military Collaborating at ‘Unprecedented’ Level; Cheney Says War Against Terror ‘May Never End,’” Washington Post, October 21, 2001, A1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
65. Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003. See “Vice President Dick Cheney Discusses a Possible War with Iraq,” CBS's Face the Nation, March 16, 2003, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
66. Tim Harper, “New Name, Same Conflict,” Toronto Star, February 11, 2006, A12, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
67. George W. Bush, “Second Inaugural Address,” January 20, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050120-1.html.
68. The “Long War” is largely attributed to General Abizaid, who took over General Tommy Franks’ position as chief of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East in July of 2003. See David Ignatius, “Achieving Real Victory Could Take Decades,” Washington Post, December 26, 2004, B1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. In 2005, the Heritage Foundation produced a book with “Long War” in its title: James Jay Carafano and Paul Rosenzweig, Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 2005). In late 2005, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, used the term in a press conference. See Bradley Graham and Josh White, “Abizaid Credited with Popularizing the Term ‘Long War,’” Washington Post, February 3, 2006, A8, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. A month after the 2006 State of the Union speech, the Defense Department issued its Quadrennial Defense Review Report. Written by Donald Rumsfeld, the first page of this important public document begins by stating that the report appears “in the fourth year of a long war, a war that is irregular in its nature” (1). The document includes an entire section titled “Fighting the Long War” (9–18).
69. George W. Bush, “2006 State of the Union Address,” January 31, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/.
70. The sixteenth-century Hapsburg–Ottoman war has been called the “Long War” by historians.The period of American politics from 1914 to 1990 has been given the name as well. See Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (New York: Knopf, 2002), 21–68.
71. The public life of the “Long War” eventually met its official end in 2007 as the occupation of Iraq became a political liability. See Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Command Shortens Life of ‘Long War’ as a Reference,” New York Times, April 24, 2007, 14, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/. Before the appearance of the Long War, the administration experimented with the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism” (G-SAVE), a decidedly righteous phrase introduced by the Pentagon in 2005 to replace the “War on Terror.” Although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld championed the phrase, President Bush decided ultimately against such a re-branding.
72. Greta Van Susteren and Bill Kristol, “Analysis with Bill Kristol,” Fox on the Record with Greta Van Susteren, April 10, 2003, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
73. George W. Bush, “President Discusses Second Term Accomplishments and Priorities,” August 3, 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050803.html.
74. Richard W. Stevenson and Eric Schmitt, “President Makes It Clear: Phrase Is ‘War on Terror,’” New York Times, August 4, 2005, A12, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
75. George W. Bush, “Press Conference by the President,” May 24, 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070524.html. The day before, Democratic presidential contender John Edwards charged that the “War on Terror” was a “bumper sticker, not a plan.” Jim Morrill, “Critics Heap Scorn on Edwards; Speaking Fee, Remarks Draw Fire,” News and Observer, May 25, 2007, A3, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
76. Walter Cronkite, “CBS Evening News,” CBS, February 27, 1968.
77. Stephen Kurkjian, “Bush Focus: A Lasting Peace; U.S. Delays Truce Talks with Iraq,” The Boston Globe, March 2, 1991, 1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
78. See Margot Norris, “Only the Guns Have Eyes: Military Censorship and the Body Count,” in Seeing Through the Media: The Persian Gulf War, ed. Susan Jeffords and Lauren Rabinowitz (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1994), 285–300.
79. See the original strategy document: Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1996), http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/nduedu/www.ndu.edu/inss/books/books%20-%201996/shock%20and%20awe%20-%20dec%2096/.
80. The strategy as executed largely failed to produce the desired “psychological effect” among Iraqi forces. This was due mainly to the fact that much of the underequipped Iraqi military had no access to the live video feed of the bombing. Peter Spiegel, “Air Force Chief Defends Campaign Despite Failure Swiftly to Unseat Saddam,” Financial Times, April 2, 2003, 2, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
81. See chapter 6, “Regime Collapse,” of the official army report released on May 1, 2003. Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 336–8. The report states:
The Marine Corps colonel in the area saw the Saddam statue as a target of opportunity and decided that the statue must come down. Since we were right there, we chimed in with some loudspeaker support to let the Iraqis know what it was we were attempting to do. (337)
82. George W. Bush, “President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,” May 1, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html.
83. Indeed, while the infinite war appears to require the longevity of an Osama bin Laden, the infinitesimal war requires the endlessly repeating demise of the “number two man.”
84. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 186–7. See also James Rosen, “‘Mission Accomplished’ Defended,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 1, 2004, 19A, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/; “One Year Later, Bush Backs Iraq Speech on Carrier,” Seattle Times, May 1, 2004, A1, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
85. “‘Mission Accomplished’ a Mistake, Rove Admits,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 17, 2004, 9A, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
86. Nancy Gibbs, “Was It Worth It?” Time, March 27, 2006, 26, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
87. Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, March 27, 2006.
88. “Report Finds Little Progress in Iraq,” CNN.com, September 4, 2007, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
89. President George W. Bush on NBC's Meet the Press, February 8, 2004; see Tim Russert, “President George W. Bush Discusses Various Political, Social and Economic Issues,” NBC's Meet the Press, February 8, 2004, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
90. When convenient, the rhetoric of the deadline defers to automaticity. For one example, see Secretary of State Colin Powell's interview on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Russert: “How close are we to war with Iraq?” Powell: “I do not know. I hope that we can avoid war. There is still the opportunity to avoid war. The president prefers a peaceful solution, but it is in the hands of Saddam Hussein.” Tim Russert, “Secretary Colin Powell Discusses the Situation with Iraq,” NBC's Meet the Press, February 9, 2003, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
91. George H.W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on the Invasion of Iraq,” January 16, 1991, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ghwbushiraqinvasion.htm.
92. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter gives states the right to self-defense and is generally the source for doctrines justifying preemptive defense under imminent threat. The distinction is generally made between preemption, which implies an imminent threat and is legal, and prevention, which does not imply an imminent threat and is illegal.
93. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” January 29, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html.
94. George W. Bush, National Security Strategy of the United States (Washington, DC: White House, 2002), http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
95. George W. Bush, “Graduation Speech at West Point,” June 1, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html.
96. George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” January 28, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html.
97. In this regard, the Bush administration appears to have chosen its words with legalistic precision. The closest the administration came to overtly stating such a position was Rumsfeld's 2002 remark, “Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons; I would not be so certain.” On another occasion, Rumsfeld said, “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.” See “Rumsfeld Feeling Heat for Claiming Imminent Threat,” Houston Chronicle, March 24, 2004, A15, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
98. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 131–64. The thesis is continued in Alan M. Dershowitz, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).
99. Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160–80. Bentham's meditation on torture was first assembled from two main fragments by W.L. Twining and P.E. Twining, “Bentham on Torutre,” Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 24 (1973): 305–56. In reference to time, Bentham wrote that torture “ought not to be applied but in cases what admit of no delay” (313).
100. Matt Feeney, “Torture Chamber,” Slate, January 6, 2004, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
101. “What Constitutes Torture?” The O'Reilly Factor, September 13, 2006, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
102. Jeff Dufour, “McCain Tortures No One in ‘24’ Cameo,” The Hill, February 2, 2006, 9, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.
103. The world owes some of its finer gradations of time to the practice of torture during the Middle Ages. The time it took to utter the Paternoster (Lord's Prayer), the Miserere (51st Psalm), or the Ave Maria often sufficed as thumbnail measures of time in the absence of accurate and available clocks. Because they were useful in administering torture, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor decreed that they become official measures of time in 1532. Alexander Waugh, Time: Its Origin, Its Enigma, Its History (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1999), 42–3.
104. This was Secretary of State Colin Powell referring to the U.N. weapons inspection process in Iraq, March 8, 2003; see Bazinet, “U.S. Counting to 10,” 5, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/.