Ten years after the Iraq war, we continue to live in an era of hysterical panic about invented catastrophes and false reassurances about real catastrophes. We laugh bitterly at the "Mission Accomplished" sign raised nearly a decade before the war ended, but the Bush administration did accomplish something. They accomplished the mission of persuading everyday Americans that the unthinkable is normal. We see remnants of this created reality in the financial crisis - the ongoing "great recession" that, like preemptive war, has transformed what Americans will accept. It is normal for criminal
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