Sept. 11, fear exploited for political reasons
ELLEN GOODMAN; The Boston Globe

Overtly political propaganda about war in Iraq turns what should be sacred date into a kind of sacrilege

BOSTON - There are dates that simply won't stay put. They leap off the calendar like a headline in the agate type of time. Dec. 7, 1941, is like that. So is Nov. 22, 1963. And of course, Sept. 11, 2001.

It's two years since we counted planes - one, two, three, four - as they crashed into one tower and then another, and then the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania soil. Two years since we stopped in our daily tracks, gasps replacing the ordinary hum of a back-to-school morning, shock trumping every other emotion except horror.

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KEY QUOTES:

"Sunday night, we saw a sober president admitting that the scenario of swift victory in Iraq was far too rosy. This was no flight deck photo op. The "Mission Accomplished" speech of May has become the "Mission Prolonged" speech of September - with an $87 billion price tag."

But repeatedly, deliberately, the president connected the dots between Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq...The trouble is that the dots he connected are cartoon bubbles drawn by the White House and its speechmakers."

"When does the small, repeated exploitation of this belief become the big lie? What do we make of a patriotism of fear?"

"On the calendar a sacred space has become a sacrilege. The White House has sent Sept. 11 spinning."