ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the discursive context of the Iraqi debate. The unsettled times of America at the turn of the third millennia came to be severely exacerbated by the real and symbolic destruction of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In the context of the uncertainties of American identity and its role in the world at the turn of the third millennium, the Bush administration encoded and narrated the terrorist attacks on the nation as the first battle that began a new War on Terror. The chapter argues that cultural processes of meaning-making in narration in the wake of the symbolic chaos after 9/11 made religion important in the public discussion. It deals with an analysis of how the War on Terror was symbolically expanded to make Iraq the next discursive battle front in the war. Nearly all advocates falsely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or at least had an active program developing them.
