Tifft, for one, finds the Friedman meme terrifying. "The idea that it doesn't matter whether we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not is to me one of the most dangerous notions that's been put out anywhere in my lifetime," she says. "Basically, what it's saying is that the ends justify the means. In this case, it's hard to argue with the ends. As chaotic as things are, no one can say Iraq isn't better off without this psychopath. But if Americans buy into that notion, what they're saying is it's OK to destroy democracy at home in order to export it overseas.

"You cannot have a democracy if you have a government lying to you about the reasons that you're going to war," she continues. "If we're signing off on that tacitly or explicitly, we're living in a very different country than we ever did before."

It's unlikely, though, that many Americans have explicitly bought into this notion. In the end, say some experts, you can't understand public opinion regarding war if you assume it's based on literalism and rationality.

Rosen suggests that Americans were aware of the unspoken motives behind the Iraq war, which partly accounts for their current indifference. "If they didn't take the official rationale all that seriously in the first place, they don't necessarily feel they were lied to about it," he says. "People know certain things are done with a wink. They know there are public relations statements. They know something like propaganda exists. There may have already been a discounting of the weapons of mass destruction. How many people really took that seriously? A large percentage of the country was behind the war whatever the reason was."

This thesis helps explain the curious calm among many war supporters regarding Iraq's WMD. After all, if one was to take Bush's rhetoric seriously, it would mean that massive amounts of apocalyptic weapons are now lost in a chaotic country infested with al-Qaida supporters. Yet few war supporters seem to be panicking.

Chris Hedges, veteran New York Times war correspondent and author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," says that logical justifications have little to do with rallying populations to war. "It's emotional," he says. "What people find enticing about war is that sense of empowerment, that sense of ennoblement, that sense of cohesion, where we suddenly feel that we belong to the nation, to the community. That almost blissful state is one that when it slips from our grasp, our response is to recreate it, not to criticize it."

Thus there's a psychological aversion from information that would challenge the heroic myths of a nation at war. "War is a very powerful narcotic," Hedges says. "It seems to be very difficult for individuals in society to face the poison of war and their own culpability in wartime. It's true in any society."

For those who backed the war out of an inchoate sense that it would avenge Sept. 11 and make America safer, it would be terrifying to think that it did neither of these things. "There is so much hope that the administration's plans have made us safe, that the public almost instinctually goes with its hope rather than with whatever knowledge it might have," says Tifft.

Muravchik's comments that Bush can't be lying because the world doesn't work that way get to the heart of the issue. What you think of Bush's honesty about Iraq is largely determined by the way you think the world operates. And the vision of the world that seems so self-evident to many liberals -- that an incompetent president deceived his way into a war that does nothing to protect Americans -- is not one that most people will accept, no matter what evidence is put forward.

Says Ward, "I've been at demonstrations trying to talk to those who are in support of the Bush administration. It's remarkable how thoroughly convinced they are that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. No matter what you tell them, they end up saying that the president knows things that you don't know. Even if true information gets out there, there's no guarantee it's going to convince anyone."

But if large segments of the public, traumatized by Sept. 11 and galvanized by the perpetual war on terror, remain unreceptive to whatever evidence is put forward, what happens to American democracy?

"In wartime, democracy always suffers," says Hedges. "The state, when at war, accrues for itself all sorts of power and privileges that don't accrue in peacetime." None of this, he stresses, is unique to America.

What is unique to America, at least at the moment, is that the country is embarked on a festering, many-fronted war whose end is nowhere in sight. That doesn't mean that if current trends continue American democracy is doomed. It may mean, though, that American democracy will turn into something different than it has been in the past.

"There are different ways a democracy can work," says Rosen. "Some of them involve public participation and popular mobilization and some don't. Some, we might say, are way more democratic than others. How can it be a democracy if people act this way? It can be a guardian democracy, a democracy run by an elite, where the general public is not tyrannized by this elite but allows it to be in charge and knows some things well and doesn't know a lot of other things. That's a condition that democracy can fall into."

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