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Stories in service of the empire: the WMD that never were
The US and British governments could not be too outlandish in their claims about the terror threat Iraq posed to hype up the 2003 invasion: the press, of course, could. SOLOMON HUGHES remembers its ignominious role
AGAINST THE GATHERING STORM: The Stop the War Coalition protests opposed military action against Iraq over allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, central London, September 2002

NEXT year will be the 20th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq war. This means this year is the anniversary of multiple fake news stories about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). It took a whole year of untrue stories about Saddam Hussein’s secret germ bombs and nuclear weapons to promote the war.

We will get quite a lot of media attention around the war anniversary — much accepting that the Iraq invasion was a bloody failure built on lies and some trying to justify the disaster.

But we have very little media attention on the fake stories before the war — because that would mean the media looking at failures by the media, and that just won’t happen.

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