Vol. 56, Issue 1 - Howard University School of Law

Cognitive Foreign Policyhallucinate to signals; [and] to feel fear, revulsion, embarrassmentor arousal upon demand. 173The Bush administration frequently referenced highly-emotivewords, contexts, and foundational memories, and comingled terms inspeeches. 174 Examples of emotional memory cues include direct andindirect contextual associations among words such as “9/11,” “Osamabin-Laden,” “terrorism,” “al-Qaeda,” “fear,” “dangers,” “chemicalweapons,” “biological weapons,” “nuclear weapons,” “mushroomclouds,” “death and destruction,” “threat to our way of life,” “SaddamHussein,” “axis-of-evil,” and “evil dictator.” 175 The catch-all phrase“weapons of mass destruction” and the acronym “WMD” likely becamea fear-based heuristic and cognitive anchor for people lackingdetailed knowledge of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.While those weapons were not discovered, WMDs were presumed toexist by another heuristic memory cue – Iraqi “denial and deception,”or its acronym “D&D.” 1763. Chunking, Exemplars, Schema, and StereotypingThe imputation that Iraq was associated with al-Qaeda was presumablypersuasive because of emotive words, memory anchors, andassociations among labels and ideas. Psychology research on chunking,exemplars, schema, and stereotyping substantiates that the mentalorganization of words and ideas can induce cognitive biases. 177Chunking refers to how knowledge is combined, organized, accepted,or rejected, and utilized to form a coherent understanding of an issueor event. 178 A schema is a cognitive structure used to process new173. DENISE WINN, THE MANIPULATED MIND: BRAINWASHING, CONDITIONING AND INDOC-TRINATION 79 (2000) (citing PERRY LONDON, EMOTIONAL CONTROL (1969)); see also MARCSIEGEL, FALSE ALARM: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE EPIDEMIC OF FEAR 25-26 (2005) (“Sometimesfears incubate, become indelible, and even increase in potency. They are often brought back tolife by stressful events.”).174. The Bush administration used word choice and association strategies to market the “waron terror.” See JOWETT & O’DONNELL, supra note 10, at 10; GILLES KEPEL, THE WAR FORMUSLIM MINDS 121 (2004). See generally supra Parts IV.B.1-2.175. Certain synonyms such as “terrorist,” “guerillas,” “insurgents,” “belligerents,” and“militants” may be used. William J. Drummond, Neutral or Negative, Accuracy or Appeasement:Nouns of Choice in the Iraqi Conflict, 19 N.D. J.L. ETHICS & PUB. POL’Y 509, 510-12 (2005).Similarly, for El Salvador, the Reagan administration also distributed State Department documentsto the media entitled “Communist Interference in El Salvador,” which involved propagandathat was later discovered to be false. Fisher, supra note 3, at 1226-27.176. SSCI/2008, supra note 138, at 40; see also Bejesky, Weapon Inspections, supra note 1, at323-24.177. Clavier & El Ghaoui, supra note 9, at 213 (“[S]ystematic statistical account of the usageof words and their association with other words can have a useful predictive quality . . . .” ).178. See WILLINGHAM, supra note 103, at 201.2012] 31