Some might find it implausible the media and legislators were so credulous.

I mean, Saddam did allow UN weapons inspectors in before the war, and nobody could direct them to any WMD. Even at the time, it took some serious mental gymnastics to believe spy agencies had all this evidence of a huge programme, and yet couldn't direct weapons inspectors to anything.

If you wanted to sell papers, you needed to sell stories about AMERICA STOPPING TERRORISM! How did you get access to stories of marines busting down doors and shoving the foreign looking faces of murderous terrorists into the dirt? Well you had to be known as a news source who said the right things, had the right attitude.

At these news organisations there were some editors who were mostly there before 9/11 happened who decided that supporting America was the crap and were pushing stories from any reporter who had "sources" that gave evidence of what was going down. Readers LOVED reading stories about heroes who kicked the ass of murderous terrorists. It was a feedback loop, the more hawkish you were the more you succeeded, the more dovish you were the more irrelevant you were.