Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This is part two of our look at George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and his use of the phrase

Axis of Evil. He used it to refer to Iran, Iraq,

and North Korea, and in those three words was the pretext for the war in Iraq and a much bigger

idea of a global fight of good versus evil. Last episode, we traced how the Bush team landed

on that idea and the language that they were using in the

months between September 11th and this speech. Today we'll get to know the person who actually

wrote those words. We'll talk about the larger ideological context in which the war on terror

was conducted and of course the aftermath. I don't think anyone looks back at the early 2000s

and says, oh, that was the Axis of Evil era.

So it is worth asking how that faded away to be replaced by war on terror and, of course, the actual war in Iraq.

So here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello, Jody.

Hey there.

Let's meet David Frum. I mentioned last

episode that he was the one charged with coming up with a phrase that would let us go after Iraq.

He comes up with the phrase, axis of, what is it, terror? Axis of hatred. Access of hatred.

He comes up with Axis of hatred. It gets punched up by another speechwriter to Axis of

evil. But it's understood that

Frum is the author of that phrase. He has written a lot about that phrase and kind of his legacy

of putting that phrase into the ether. So after the break, we will meet David Fromm. We will talk

...