Across America: Sgt Luke Wilson, who survived the ambush of his convoy in Baghdad five months ago, is a brave young man. His left leg dangled by a tendon after he was hit by an RPG. Before it was amputated, the 24-year-old from Oregon told his comrades how to put a tourniquet on his thigh so he wouldn't bleed to death, joked with doctors, sent the army chaplain packing, writes Lara Marlowe
But is bravery in the pursuit of an illusion heroism? Or folly? Sgt Wilson, whom I met at the Walter Reed Army Hospital said he wished he could give his other leg for "freedom and democracy" in Iraq. As I travelled across America these past two weeks, I thought of Sgt Wilson often. He came to symbolise for me the self-deluding, logic-defying streak that runs through tens of millions of Americans who look likely to re-elect George Bush in November.
From Luke Wilson, the hyper-patriotic residents of a small Appalachian town and the born-again Christians of Colorado Springs, I heard the same broken record. Not only do Bush supporters not care that the President has repeatedly lied to them, they make excuses for him.
It doesn't matter that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, I heard over and over. He wanted to have them. And he used them against his own people. That was 15 years before the 2003 invasion, I protested. The US sold him chemicals, and the State Department instructed diplomats to say that Iran, not Saddam, gassed the Kurds at Halabja. My objections met with a shrug.
Nor did it matter that the 9/11 Commission found no links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, another lie of the Bush administration. The bad guys would have linked up sooner or later, Bush supporters told me.
Perhaps the biggest Bush administration lie is that Iraq is improving; that, as Bush said on Thursday, "this country is headed towards democracy". The President contradicted a pessimistic intelligence report revealed by the New York Times the same day. But Bush supporters believe the "progress in Iraq" lie, too, despite the fact that much of the country lies outside US control and dozens of Iraqis are being killed daily.
The half of America that supports Bush feeds on clichés that are simple and easy to understand. The US is in Iraq "because of 9/11", "to defend freedom" and "because it's better to fight them there than here". But freedom means only freedom to agree with the Bush administration: when I raised questions about the Iraq war, I was accused of being a 1930s-style appeaser.
The majority of Iraqis want the US there; an opinion poll proved it, Sgt Wilson insisted. Mrs Simpson in her pizza parlour said the same thing. So did Pastor Ted in Colorado.
The problem in Iraq is not the US presence, but the insurgents, supporters of the war told me with absolute conviction. But if the Iraqis love America so much, why are there so many insurgents? The insurgents are "foreign Arabs", not Iraqis, I was told. OK, setting aside all the evidence to the contrary, why do "foreign Arabs" or even al-Qaeda, want to kill Americans? Except for Pastor Ted, who thought it was "because they think we're infidels," no one had a clue.
For days before and after the anniversary of September 11th, there was non-stop coverage of commemoration ceremonies for the 2,752 victims in the World Trade Centre. Not once in two weeks did anyone mention the Iraqi civilians - between 12,721 and 14,751 - killed since the US invasion.
I asked Michael Ratner of the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York why Americans were so indifferent to the people their armed forces arrest, torture and kill. "Because it's not us," he replied.
When it came to wilful self-delusion, Sheriff Larry Stewart of Tulia, Texas, took the cake. He asked me what I thought of Iraq, since I'd been there. I answered truthfully that the war was a catastrophe. Rubbish, the Sheriff sniffed. The bad news from Iraq is "a complete media fabrication", just like allegations of racism against his dear little town, which charged more than 10 per cent of its black population with selling cocaine.
There is none so blind as he who will not see. How else can you explain that millions of Americans vote against their own interest, from the lower middle class affected by slashed government programmes to soldiers whose tours of duty have been repeatedly extended by the Pentagon's "Stop Loss" programme?
This irrational behaviour was summed up by a cartoon in the Kansas City Star. "1,000 War Dead . . . 8 Million Americans Out of Work . . . A $422 Billion Deficit . . . AND an 11-point Lead," said the headlines above a caricature of Bush. "Just what do you have to do to get thrown out of office in this country?"
Americans passively accept that the government lies to them. Take the casualty figures in Iraq. The Pentagon says 7,000 soldiers have been wounded. But Stephen Robinson, the veteran and former Pentagon analyst who runs the National Gulf War Resource Centre in Washington, says Transport Command has recorded the medical evacuation of 19,000 soldiers from Iraq. "Someone's not telling the truth," Robinson adds.
Members of Bush's own party are getting wise. The Republican Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this week criticised the "dancing-in-the-street crowd" who wrongly predicted that Iraqis would welcome US soldiers. The "nonsense" of the predictions and lack of planning were obvious, Lugar said.
Another Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, suggested a hearing for "these smart guys that got us in there and said, 'Don't worry'." But the average Bush supporter sticks blindly to his guns. With the exception of the main daily newspapers, which most people don't read, American media give lowest priority to foreign news.
For two weeks I zapped through television channels in hotel rooms every evening. I saw very little reporting about Iraq, not a single news story about Europe, but saturation coverage of the September 11th anniversary, Bill Clinton's heart surgery and Hurricane Ivan.
It's enough to watch a White House press conference, where spokesman Scott McClellan is on chummy first-name terms with reporters, to understand why ignorant nationalism is endemic. Dennis Bernstein of Pacifica Radio calls them "the media stenographer crew".
Under the guise of objectivity, there is no attempt to determine who tells the truth, who is lying. "Self-censorship has sunk deep into the bones," Bernstein said over coffee in New York. "US journalists have lost their understanding of what it means to seek the truth".
No wonder a west coast peace activist was stunned to see Carole Coleman, RTE's Washington correspondent, challenge Bush in an interview. "You would never see that here," Susan Galleymore said. "The journalists here have been neutered."
On September 7th Vice-President Dick Cheney said it was "absolutely essential" that US voters "make the right choice" in the presidential election. "Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating."
The following day Jim Houx, a businessman in Kansas City, told me what he thought of the administration's fear-mongering. "If you get on a plane and the pilot runs up and down the aisle shouting, 'Look out! Look out!' everybody is going to be terrified," Houx said. "That's what the Bush administration is doing. That's how he's going to win the election."
Though Cheney later qualified his remarks, the 'vote Bush or the terrorists will get you' message seems to be working. Polls show that far more Americans trust Bush to protect them from terrorist attack than Kerry. The Bush campaign has deftly turned what should be John Kerry's greatest strength - his record as a Vietnam War hero - into his greatest weakness. Bush's blunders - ignoring evidence that al-Qaeda was about to strike America, the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq - are used to portray him as a strong commander-in-chief.
John Kerry is part of the problem. Though a substantial minority of the Americans I talked to said they wouldvote for him, not one believed in him the way Bush's followers do. "The man is running such a pathetic campaign that it's embarrassing," Susan Galleymore told me. "George Bush plays dirty. He doesn't have many messages, but he stays on track. Kerry doesn't even stand up for himself."
Only a few of the Americans I met expressed concern about the deteriorating image of the US abroad. "We're hated all over the world because of Bush," Pamela Ford, a black cardiac nurse told me in Detroit. But others felt the US had been betrayed by Europe.
The evangelical leader, Pastor Ted Haggard, was openly scornful. "Europe thinks they're the light of the world," he told me. "Well, they're mistaken."
Americans' deep-seated distrust of "big government" is not the least of the country's contradictions. They're happy to let Bush ride rough-shod over the Middle East at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, but don't think Washington is capable of organising health care.
"Americans just don't trust the government to get involved in healthcare," a doctor's wife in Maryland told me. As a result, 45 million Americans have no health insurance.
The ideological desire for government to wither and die has led to widespread deregulation, which in turn leads to chaos. Try changing planes at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. In the American Airlines terminal it's impossible to find out where connecting flights on other airlines leave from. Each airline is a power unto itself. Some refuse to transfer each others' baggage, and to hell with the passenger.
The doctrine of free markets and individual responsibility means it's every man for himself. The up side is low taxation and the possibility of getting rich if you work very hard. The down side is a cruel world where there is no safety net for the weakest members of society.
In the trailer parks of the Appalachians, on Indian reservations in South Dakota, talking to homeless people in San Francisco, I remembered the lyrics of an old Bruce Springsteen song: There's just winners and losers, and don't you get caught on the wrong side of that line . . .
Some Democrats, like Bridget Nolan, an Irish-American journalist I met in the Appalachians, recognise the shamefulness of a rich country that fails to provide for its citizens. Haitham Mashalah, a Jordanian-American taxi-driver in Detroit, said that in Amman you never see people ill and hungry in the street; it's a question of honour. Mashalah has spent 21 years in the US, and he still can't understand "why the Americans don't care about their own people".
Truly, America's irrational streak runs deep.