The US spent months promoting a false case for the invasion of Iraq. This time, we\u2019re in the dark about Washington\u2019s goals<\/p>\n
In October 2002, George W Bush laid out his case for taking the US to war against Iraq in a half-hour speech televised around the world. Bush warned<\/a> that Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime could attack the US \u201con any given day\u201d with chemical or biological weapons, including anthrax, mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin. He argued Iraq was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and could develop a bomb in less than a year. And if those warnings weren\u2019t enough to terrify the US public, Bush invoked the ultimate fear of an unprovoked nuclear attack: \u201cFacing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof \u2013 the smoking gun \u2013 that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n The world soon learned that Bush\u2019s rationale for invading Iraq was based on manipulated intelligence<\/a> and outright lies; the Iraqi regime no longer had any weapons of mass destruction and was not developing them. But the administration\u2019s relentless campaign to convince Americans that Saddam was a threat had paid off by generating significant support. As the invasion got under way in March 2003, many polls showed public approval<\/a> of the war at more than 70%. Bush\u2019s own approval rating<\/a> hovered around a similar high, underscoring that war can boost the popularity of America\u2019s commander-in-chief as few other things can.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US spent months promoting a false case for the invasion of Iraq. This time, we\u2019re in the dark about Washington\u2019s goals In October 2002, George W Bush laid out his case for taking the US to war against Iraq in a half-hour speech televised around the world. Bush warned that Saddam Hussein\u2019s regime could … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}