The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to
the Public Based on a Pack of Lies/A Primeira Guerra do Iraque foi vendida ao Público Baseada Num Pacote de Mentiras
June
27, 2014
President George HW Bush and
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1990. (Image: Doug
Mills/ AP)
Polls suggest that Americans tend to
differentiate between our “good war” in Iraq — “Operation Desert Storm,”
launched by George HW Bush in 1990 — and the “mistake” his son made in 2003.
Across the ideological
spectrum, there’s broad
agreement that the first Gulf War was “worth fighting.” The opposite is true of the 2003 invasion, and a
big reason for those divergent views was captured in a 2013 CNN poll that found that “a majority of Americans (54%)
say that prior to the start of the war the administration of George W. Bush
deliberately misled the U.S. public about whether Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.”
But as the usual suspects come out of
the woodwork to urge the US to
once again commit troops to Iraq, it’s important to recall that the first Gulf War was
sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told
by the second Bush administration 12 years later.
The Lie of an Expansionist Iraq
