The Truman doctrine speech, as a rhetorical configuration of cold war motives, is examined closely for its terministic incentives to exaggerate American insecurity and contain the spread of world communism. Metaphors of disease, strategically embedded in the design of the speech, converged with existing images of fire and flood to construct a sense of epidemic and impending disaster. This disease metaphor is traced from the genesis of the speech through multiple drafts and revisions to its presentation, reception, and cultural legacy of a heroic vision of recurring global threat and mythic promise of achieving total security by eradicating the communist infestation.