Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The representation of issues, especially those that are highly contested or ambiguous, is an ongoing process always subject to challenge and new re-presentations. This article explores the discursive competition between journalists and White House officials over the recontextualization of words spoken by General Peter Pace, which seemingly cast doubt on White House claims of Iranian involvement in Iraq. Pace's words, along with those spoken by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow and President George W. Bush in their appearances before the press, enter into a web of intertextual connections involved in the contestation over the `truth' of the matter. The …

The textual analysis in this paper examines an interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney by Gloria Borger on CNBC’s 2004 Capital Report. The interview took place on 17 June 2004, the day after the 9/11 Commission released Staff Statement No. 15, a twelve page preliminary report that concluded no ‘‘collaborative relationship’’ existed between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The aim of the analysis is to show how the struggle over ‘‘truth’’ unfolds in micro-level discursive interaction and to underscore the way this process is embedded within and contributes to the circulation of truth claims associated with the macro-level War on Terror Discourse (WoTD).