Ari Fleischer

This two-part, four-hour look at the life and presidency of George W. Bush features interviews with historians, journalists and several members of the president’s inner circle. Part One chronicles Bush’s unorthodox road to the White House. The once wild son of a political dynasty, few expected Bush to ascend to the presidency. Yet 36 days after the November 2000 election, Bush emerged the victor of the most hotly contested race in the nation's history. Little in the new president’s past could have prepared him for the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001. Thrust into the role of war president, Bush's response to the deadly terrorist attack would come to define a new era in American foreign policy. Part Two opens with the ensuing war in Iraq and continues through Bush’s second term, as the president confronts the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Echolalia is the meaningless repetition of words or phrases associated with forms of dementia and aphasia. In the build-up to the war in Iraq certain phrases were endlessly repeated to the point where these empty rhetorical phrases were confused with concrete facts. I tried to record as many instances of people repeating the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” as I could stand and represent these statements in a way that draws attention to the deadening effect of their repetition, however emphatically they are expressed.