This project aims to analyse the build-up to the 2003 Iraq war from a doxastic perspective, taking the nuclear and terror belief propositions as the paradigm of the professed rationale for the war. The Bush administration expressed a belief in favour of the given rationale under conditions epistemically inadequate to warrant belief. I will explore the concept of belief in relation to acceptance and faith in a bid to highlight the distinctive character of belief. The research aims to examine a possible attribution of belief and acceptance in light of the evidential conditions at the time. In an attempt to establish the epistemic status of the given paradigm belief propositions, taking them at face value, the research explores a commonsensical, internalism, and a non-commonsensical, externalism, justification theory along with deontologism as a possible source of motivation behind the internalist constraint on justification. This research concludes, in light of the evidential conditions at the time, that the given supposed beliefs can be rightly characterised as neither paradigmatic nor nonparadigmatic cases of belief. That is, it concludes that neither belief nor pragmatic belief can be rightly attributed to the given supposed believing subjects. Rather, it concludes - in light of the new security environment, the nature of the alleged threat in question, the certainty thresholds and evidential standards considered appropriate to accept a given threat in a post- 9/11 era, the inadequacy of the available supporting evidence along with the risk asymmetries associated with accepting or rejecting that p - that the given alleged cases of belief are more apt to be characterised as cases of mere propositional acceptance. That is, of course, if the given supposed beliefs were genuine propositional attitudes rather than pretended beliefs or mere public display. The originality of this thesis emanates from the epistemological approach I have taken to examine the Bush administration's case for the war. In light of what I have concluded in relation to the epistemic status of the given supposed beliefs, my contribution to knowledge is also the demonstration that the commonsensical view of justification - represented by the internalist account - is the theory that is most consistent with our intuitions of the rationality of belief. I argue that internalism receives its intuitive appeal from our commonsensical convictions of epistemic justification rather than from deontological considerations, as claimed by rival externalists.

This thesis examines the operation of morally asymmetrical distinctions in the discourse produced in advance of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It does not set out to explain the invasion's occurrence, but, based upon the analysis of media texts, parliamentary debates, and political speeches, focuses upon aspects of the processes of justification and criticism preceding invasion. It blends together aspects of the work of Michel Foucault and Niklas Luhmann, with insights drawn from various approaches to the analysis of discourse and communication, in pursuit of an understanding of how the discursive space available to contributors to debate is restricted. It pays close attention to the closely related processes of 'disclaiming' and 'ontological gerrymandering' - interventions which are concerned with controlling what is, and is not, the case - particularly in terms of the way that they are orientated towards controlling how the person making them is to be observed. It is argued that the circulation of the illegitimacy of various positions puts some contributors at risk of being observed according to the more negative side of a morally asymmetrical distinction. It is argued that this creates 'difficulty' for them, and incites their engagement in particular forms of discursive work in the attempt to avoid illegitimacy themselves. Close attention is paid to any observable regularities in the ways in which contributors attempted to avoid having their position associated with, amongst other things, 'anti-Americanism', 'appeasement', 'pacifism', 'warmongering', or a 'pro-Saddam' stance, all of which would threaten their legitimacy. A variety of techniques are identified, including the invocation of a contributor's history of positions (their 'communicative career'), as well as their use of their allegedly less legitimate context-specific allies as a contrastive foil, at the expense of whom they claim their own legitimacy.