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Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration's Rhetoric

Amy  Gershkoff  a1 and Shana  Kushner  a2 a1 Department of Politics, Princeton University (agershko@princeton.edu) a2 Department of Politics, Princeton University (skushner@princeton.edu)

Article author query gershkoff a     kushner s

Abstract

We suggest that the 2003 war in Iraq received high levels of public support because the Bush administration successfully framed the conflict as an extension of the war on terror, which was a response to the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our analysis of Bush's speeches reveals that the administration consistently connected Iraq with 9/11. New York Times coverage of the president's speeches featured almost no debate over the framing of the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror. This assertion had tremendous influence on public attitudes, as indicated by polling data from several sources. ^a

Footnotes

^a Amy Gershkoff (agershko@princeton.edu) and Shana Kushner (skushner@princeton.edu) are graduate students in the Department of Politics, Princeton University. The authors thank Larry Bartels, Gary Jacobson, Douglas Foyle, seminar participants at Princeton University, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Authors' names listed in alphabetical order.