ABSTRACT
In Chapters 1–3 I analyzed the narrative patterns in public addresses given by President Bush during the months between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 19 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, relying on positioning theory as a framework to explore how elements of public memory, national myths and militarism operated discursively, promoting heightened levels of pride, fear and anger while concealing or denying the presence of guilt, shame and/or humiliation. In this chapter, I introduce discursive data from narratives collected through personal interviews with veterans of the Iraq War. The data presented here attempt to demonstrate elements of connectivity between the presenting narrative patterns and how individuals caught in the uptake understood and responded to them. This discussion explores the extent to which the features described in Chapters 1–3 resonated with the individual thoughts and feelings of these soldiers and shaped their perception of the official positioning of self (the United States) and other (Saddam Hussein/Iraq).
