July 13, 2004 - The psychologists call it “cognitive dissonance.” It is the condition in which the mind tries to reconcile two incongruent known facts; the existence of one negating the existence of the other; in such a way as to make the two compatible. The result of the mind performing that mission impossible is the creation of a system of irrational belief to permit the discordant facts to be brought into a false harmony. Taken to an extreme it becomes psychosis. That seems to be where the Bush re-election campaign seems to be headed with the President’s new justification for his war in Iraq.

The nation now knows that in every particular the President’s justification for ordering the invasion of Iraq was grounded in asserted facts that have proven to be false. That is not partisan rhetoric. It is the bipartisan unanimous conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The nation now knows that when President Bush told us two years ago that Osama Bin Laden had been marginalized was no longer important; when he told us that the Al Qaeda network had been neutralized as a force in international affairs after the swift conquest of the Taliban; it was at best an over optimistic assessment.

We know that assessment was as wrong as the justifications the President gave us for diverting our attention and resources from the hunt for Bin Laden and his cohorts because that Saudi scorpion has repeatedly sunk his sting in Western interests. Bali, Casablanca, Madrid, Istanbul, and even Saudi Arabia itself have directly felt the burning venom of that still potent sting. We know it because Secretary Tom Ridge repeatedly warns us that Al Qaeda has both the intention and the capability to deal the American homeland a grievous blow.

We also know that the American military conquered Afghanistan and then rolled up the Iraqi Army like a discarded carpet. Yet we also know that America’s service men and women continue to die in Iraqi alleys and Afghan streets while the President struts about proclaiming that his victories have made the nation and the world a safer place. If Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda have been marginalized some two years since then the margin he inhabits is a dangerous place indeed, for it is from his margin that he continues to strike with lethal effect.

It is from these incompatible facts that the President and his campaign are trying to compose symphony of support yet every chord they strike is a dissonant cacophony of discord, They want the American electorate to believe that we are winning the war on terrorism and at the same time believe that we must stand in fear of the terrorists undiminished capacity to strike. They want to have us believe that at the same time we are safer because of their foreign wars and at risk of an attack so grievous that it will suspend democracy in the homeland. It is the very definition of cognitive dissonance.