The second half of Carlos’s question: Hypocrisy, aptly described and analyzed in this article on Common Dreams

The Rhetoric of Bush’s Inaugural Address versus the Reality of Bush Policy

Correctly recognizing the roots of terrorism, President Bush noted that “as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat.” For much of the second half of his first term, he has emphasized that as a necessary means of curbing the threat of terrorism the United States must push for reform and democratization of the autocratic governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, and the Palestine Authority.
It is important to note, however, that none of the 9/11 hijackers came from those countries. Instead, they came from U.S.-backed dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, which continue to receive billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment annually. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Tunisia and Morocco are also among the autocratic regimes in the Islamic world which continue to receive unconditional support from the United States.

It is a deception of fantastic proportions that the Bush administration has avoided (via slyly and subtly ignoring it)
and has heard hardly a peep from any other than Michael Moore and Carig Unger (author of House of Bus, House of Saud) about their letting Saudi Arabia off the hook so completely. It is a FACT that all but 3 of the 9/11 Hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. It is a fact that scores of Saudis were secretly escorted out of the country, a nd it is a FACT that money came from Saudi Arabia to finance , over the course of about a year or more, the training and preparations of 2 9/11 Hijackers, who stayed in the apartment and were known to an FBI informant (all of this was revealed in Bob Graham’s Book, Intelligence Matters. Where in the hell have the American people been? When our comedians (Al Franken and Jon Stewart) have been much more adept at recognizing this BS and then having the balls to call it so, we are into this up to our butts.

It is presumably no coincidence that the only autocratic regimes toward which the Bush administration has pressed for reform have been those which have traditionally opposed American hegemonic goals in the region.

Right. No coincidence whatsoever. It is all a part of what seems to be a successfully subtle campaign to demonize the opponents as “enemies of freedom”, just like the fundamentalist backlash in the Southern Baptist Church won the masses by declaring the “liberals” as “enemies of Biblical Christianity”. Al Mohler still does so today, even though he and the vast majority of the Christian Right promote a Bible that has all of the “holes” in it that Jim Wallis describes as the result of the American Church fashjioning its own “American Bible”, with all the references to the poor and justice cut out.

The rhetorical campaign also , as this autor sugests, serves as a means of re-focusing the perceptions of the danger away from their own disasterous policies in the Middle East.

If U.S. policy is indeed so contrary to the promotion of freedom and liberty, why has this become such a focal point of the Bush administration at the start of its second term?

Perhaps it is a means of diverting attention from the administration’s disastrous policies in Iraq. Though claims that Saddam Hussein still possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and had operational links with Al-Qaeda have been proven false, no one can deny the repressive nature of his regime or the Iraqi people’s right to live freely. Unfortunately, American forces have been responsible for far more civilian deaths in the nearly two years since the U.S. occupation began than during the final two years of Saddam’s regime.

I think we may have to go back a bit further than that to see Saddam’s death toll match that which the US forces have meted out. Again, this omission is aided by the Bush administration’s aggressive efforts to avoid the showing of caskets of dead American soldiers returning, and body counts of Iraqi civilians. Any figures that exceed the “officially non-official” numbers of the Bush administration (via such outlets such as Fox and such) is met with stringent opposition and denial. These figures (which have been conspicuously absent for quite some time now, especially “post-Fallujah”), are “officially non-official” becuaase the Bush White House has vehemently maintained that “they don’t do body counts”. Of course they don’t. This would cast some measure of light upon the evil they are inflicting.

It may also be a means of silencing opposition. If, for example, the American public can actually be made to believe that the primary purpose of U.S. foreign policy under President Bush is to promote democracy, critics of Bush administration policy can therefore be depicted as not supporting democracy. Indeed, in the only reference President Bush made to critics of his policies in his inaugural address, he blithely dismissed them as those who have “questioned the global appeal of liberty.”

As Zinn so effectively chronicles, deceit and campaigns of “placation of the people” has not been the exclusive province of “conservatiove” administrations. But thus far, with few exceptions (not to excuse us for having ONLY A FEW), this tendency toward “American Patriotic Propaganda” aimed at enlisting even those who are on the receiving end of the policies which favor those in power has rarely been so expansionist, or quite so willing to pile one vision of conquest upon another. Their “mandate” to do what “the people obviously sanctioned” by voting for him, 51 to 48 (discounting the registration roll purging and the voting machine corruptions in Ohio) ; has been used to absurd measure, simply because it fits their purposes, and apparently is working to maintain a minimal hold on power. 9/11, as Rove frequently declares, is actually an “opportunity” for America to show its resove (translated: it is a political advantage, and “we plan on exploiting that and riding it for all its worth”).