Jan. 24, 2002 – The White House announces a Continuation of National Emergency, with Respect to Terrorists Who Threaten to Disrupt the Middle East Peace Process.

 
This notice was actually issued on January 18, a Friday evening, but is publicly released several days later. It is one of few White House releases in which the Middle East peace process is given prominent mention.

Jan. 28, 2002 – President Bush meets with Hamid Karzai, now designated Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority, at the White House. In an appearance for reporters at the Rose Garden, Bush promises great U.S. support for the struggling nation of Afghanistan:

 
“The United States is committed to building a lasting partnership with Afghanistan.  We'll help the new Afghan government provide the security that is the foundation for peace.  Today, peacekeepers from around the world are helping provide security on the streets of Kabul.  The United States will continue to work closely with these forces and provide support for their mission.  We will also support programs to train new police officers, and to help establish and train an Afghanistan national military. 
          The United States is also committed to playing a leading role in     the reconstruction of Afghanistan.  Today, I announce the United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation will provide an additional $50-million line of credit for Afghanistan to finance private-sector projects.  This announcement builds on the United States' pledge in Tokyo earlier this month to provide $297 million this year to create jobs and to start rebuilding Afghanistan's agricultural sector, its health care system, and its educational system.  Yet these efforts are only the beginning.”
 

 
Jan. 29, 2002 – Bush gives his second State of the Union address, notable for its “axis of evil” catchphrase by speechwriter David Frum, and singles out supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a concern:

“Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.”

The White House line on Iraq here is exactly that which it has funneled to the public through available media including articles in the New York Times, as it will continue to do.

 
Along with sitting in on Iraq strategy, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, has spent part of January going over drafts of the State of the Union speech including the “Axis of Evil” phrase, according to Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack. Libby reportedly wanted to include North Korea and Syria rather than single out Iraq. High officials haggle over which nations to Axis-ize. Pakistan does not make the cut.

 
What happens here, as with virtually all White House rhetoric about Iraq from 2001 through 2003, is that the hapless nation of Iraq is put into a rhetorical box from which nobody could escape:

‘We say you have weapons of mass destruction, and the only way you can prove you don’t have them is to show them to us.’

 
In psychology, this destructive tactic has been called a ‘double bind’; the very fact that no Iraq WMD have been found becomes itself proof of their purported existence, as Othello becomes more enraged against Desdemona because he cannot see any evidence of her infidelity. This is the ghastly double bind of torture, which in a grisly old narrative “exposed his [prisoner’s] bowels but not his innocence.”

Jan. 31, 2002 – The president hosts German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder at the White House. In a joint press availability, Schroeder also assures the world that Afghanistan will be supported:

 
“We, as you all know, are very committed to the participation in the peace corps in Afghanistan, under the umbrella of the United Nations. Obviously, and as the President has just pointed out, we are very interested in committing ourselves to training police forces, law enforcement forces within Afghanistan, because we find it crucially important that such intra-Afghanistan proper homegrown police forces can be built up in the process. And in the more long-term, obviously, a military structure will be needed here, too.”

 
These assurances about Afghanistan are poignant in retrospect, measured against the way things actually go for Afghanistan after 2001. Note that Schroeder’s emphasis on the U.N. is not enthusiastically seconded by Bush.