[symple]

Iraqi WMD was believed enough by the public to make it politically infeasible for most Congressmen to vote against authorizing war against Iraq. That the NYT later issued an apology is irrelevant. Iraqi WMD is a great example of manufacturing consent long enough to push through a major policy blunder.

In retrospect the effort was comical enough, in light of the fact that none were found, that the one responsible for it (President Bush) famously joked about looking for WMD under a desk. He received no real political backlash for his joke or for being vile enough to start an unnecessary war that killed hundreds of thousands.

The propaganda surrounding the global war on terror was effective enough that when the U.S. performed terrorist acts on weddings that killed innocents it was labeled “drone strikes” and when the enemy performed acts that killed innocents they were labeled “terrorist attacks”.

People initially believed the b.s. the Pentagon said about Tillman’s death. People largely believed that Chalabi would be the political savior of a new Iraq until our government no longer liked him. There are people who still think we shouldn’t trade with Cuba because they are communist but see no problem trading with China. Criticism of Israel is often times labeled anti-semitism. Do more than a small minority of people understand that Jews aren’t the only semites in the world?

I can’t point to too many specific instances of U.S. media engaged in outright propaganda but there are some clear trends where the collective attitudes on certain topics/beliefs are engineered to be a certain way. The fact that people even ever seriously uttered the phrase “war on christmas” is enough know that opinions are deliberately being manipulated by media.

[the-dude]

Although I agree with your post, the invasion of Iraq can not be seen without taking the US PTSD about 9/11 into account. The WMDs were just a parallel construction.

[mrangle]

There wasn't a 9/11 justification to invade Iraq without the WMD excuse. Which is why they used it.

I know why they invaded Iraq. It has nothing to do with 9/11 PTSD nor oil except as a secondary or tertiary benefit.

Whether or not the actual reason is a good one is another debate. But that doesn't change the fact of the WMD lie, but most importantly that of the observation that the Press is an in-total propaganda arm of at least one sect of the government. Which has a lot of downstream implications for the twenty plus years since.

[symple]

My memory of the events is that pretty much everyone supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Manufactured support was needed for Iraq. Invasion of Iraq was 1.5 years after 9/11 and Iraq wasn’t tied to 9/11.

I think our overreaction to 9/11 is itself an example of manipulation by media. We’ve done 9/11 type events on other nations for decades and those nations didn’t get PTSD from our actions. This leads me to think that our over the top outrage was partially fueled by media narratives.