Wow! This is interesting. I thought the "WMDs in Iraq" was fake news, turns out the "no WMDs in Iraq" is fake news! So much fake news, hard to sort everything out.
Thats not what Im saying at all.
Im not creating a false dilemma fallacy. Iraq didnt have wmds, journalists reiterated official talking points uncritically, even as intelligence officers came out to say otherwise.
What happened with Iraq was a great example of fake news propaganda and the failure of journalism lately, because it was soo wrong not even close to "perfectly correct" or correct anything.
The Iraq WMD thing is the one everybody has been falling back on whenever they need to prove their claims that "all western media are propaganda" for a decade or more. It's been 20 years, the NYT recognized the lie and apologized, and these guys still haven't found a better example.
Doesn't the lack of newer, more convincing examples tell you a lot about the veracity of the claim?
Edit: didn't see the missile gap thing, did you add it later? AFAIK, that was more of a lie by the US Air Force to increase their funding and actual government officials believed it.
In 2003 the US Government and media collaborated to start the Iraq War based on false reporting. Tens of thousands of people died. Today, the notion that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction would be suppressed as "misinformation" because it contradicts the official narrative.
The claim was that Iraq threatened USA. At the time, everybody knew this was a lie. Iraq did not have capable missiles to reach US territory and claims that it had a secret nuclear program were extremely dubious. Remember : the fear was nuclear ICBM, this is what was hammered in the media. They fell back to chemical weapons, but if the US plans to invade every country with a stock of chemical weapons, good fucking luck!
Colin Powell, presenting the threats to the UN council, put forward a nuclear threat. He used as proofs, documents that were fake. "Obvious fake" as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency would call them: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/
What he said about it: "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
Iraq was (correctly it appears, in hindsight) fearing an invasion so it was worried that opening up to foreign inspectors would lead to espionage to prepare the invading forces.
In the end, as a last hope to preserve peace, it allowed inspectors in a mission, led by Hans Blix. Here is how he described the cooperation of Iraqi forces:
"Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with Unmovic in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable."
> If I believed any conspiracy as far as Iraq goes
US disregarded that and still decided to invade. No one had a single doubt that this was about oil.
Iraq is a clear case of a conspiracy. This is actually a very good counter-point to conspiracy theorists: When a government tries to lie about something, it is really obvious, and it still works.
Imagine that this existed right before the Iraq war. If a news article said that Saddam Hussein had WMD's, how would Google's 'fact-check' algorithm work?
1. on the one hand, official reports suggested that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction
2. on the other hand, those reports were fabricated or based on false evidence
Any 'fact checking' is limited by the information currently available to everyone. Further, not all evidence is presented equally well.
I can imagine media products "lie" (by omission, by implicit bias, or even blatantly) but will need some references to reorient to the idea the scale is the same.
My prior is still heavily tilted by the lead up to the Iraq war -- and think the time since has only seen a further embrace of "tell the audience what they want to hear over evidence" (see "top talent" texts re. dominion suit)
[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/poll-republicans-wmds...
> 52 percent [fox viewers] say that they believe it to be “definitely true” or “probably true” that American forces found an active weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq.
> Overall, 42 percent still believe that troops discovered WMDs, a misleading factor in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
There seems to be a very common belief in the US that there were effectively zero WMD in Iraq at all. That perception was built up by the non-stop media assault by the left directed at George W. Bush and Republicans in general, proclaiming Iraq had no WMD period. It was used to tar and feather the right politically for being so gun-ho about the war.
In fact, there were WMD in Iraq, just not an especially menacing arsenal, and they of course were not actively developing new weapons.
I don't think the general public understands the distinction at all. For nearly a decade I've heard the same statement variation: 'well, there were no WMD in Iraq'
Not sure why you’re so downvoted. This is exactly what happened during the Iraq War. The official truth was Saddam had WMDs and all the mass media held to that line with a few exceptions. It was all wrong.
Authoritative sources 'debunked' it? In which alternate reality did that happen.
They started with 'Iraq has mass wmds and is a danger to civilized world', with CNN even upping the ante most by putting in talking heads who claimed that Saddam 'had intercontinental missiles which could hit US eastern seaboard and he is planning "something"'.
The scarce 'contrary' article in NYT would start with "Are we being too hasty", then would conclude by saying "but the risk of not taking action is too great". That was the breadth of 'contrary'.
Even 1-2 years after the invasion when the smell started they tried selling 'Iraq had SOME wmds'. When people didnt buy it, they started to defer blame by whitewashing the 'intelligence community' by blaming 'false reports by Iraqi contractors'. Then when it didnt work they started claiming that 3 letter agencies 'misinterpreted' evidence. When that also didnt sell, they just stopped talking about it.
What part of that is 'debunking'.
They didnt debunk anything. They SOLD it, just like how they sold the original Iraq War lie.
I bet you didnt even have the slightest idea about the above until now. You probably never heard about it. That's how it works.
Original iraq war lie. Second iraq war lie. Syrian govt. used chemical weapons lie. Islamist terrorists in Syria are actually freedom fighters lie. China has concentration camps lie. and now China is doing genocide lie.
They JUST keep selling lies over and over and over and people like you SO easily trust them. That's what enables this entire setup to keep going on.
No. I dont need any of those 'authoritative' sources. Nobody does.
You seem to be confused about the difference between real/fake news vs correct/wrong news. The claims by the Bush administration about WMDs were real news. That the claims turned out false is another matter entirely.
Your problem is that you're interpreting it in terms of "is wrong/is right" instead of "deliberately lying/trying to be accurate". Perhaps news publications should've been more skeptical, but they themselves weren't trying to make things up.
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