To be more accurate about something that matters, no intelligence agency in the US, the UK, AU, or other major intell nation claimed that Iraq had WMD's.
That was completely and utterly a senior US political position that demanded non existeant evidence to support a bizarro "known unknowns" claim .. backed by then UK politicians and tacitly agreed with by the then AU Prime Minister.
US Colin Powell did the worst dog and pony show at the UN talking up cartoons as "evidence" and agencies did what they do and made no public comment but . . .
Nobody with a clue and eyes on the ground from the Intell community thought WMDs were a thing, that one was all from the political sphere.
Asking people to "Prove a negative" is such a logical stupidity that is hard to understand how often people get into this.
Imagine you ordering something online on Amazon. And not getting it delivered. And then when you complain to Amazon about this, they asking you to provide a proof that it was not delivered and you don't have it.
How does somebody prove they don't have something? How do they get punished for not showing the absence of something they don't have?
-------------------------- Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and
restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as
well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if
left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during
this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these
Key Judgments.)
We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD
efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception
efforts. Revelations after the Gulf war starkly demonstrate
the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information.
We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's
WJMD programs.
Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its
chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and
invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of
most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program.
Here is reporting from WaPo and NYTimes on what you're saying you saw as Colin's "dog and pony show."
Washington Post - "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
NYTimes - "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...
In the midst of war, if you dared to call such thing a "dog and pony show" you'd be called a Saddam shill. War propaganda is a hell of drug, and we often only realize what's happening long after its over. And then we rewrite history in some sort of cognitive dissonance, failing to learn from the past.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_Wa...
> According to the French academic Dominique Reynié, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq war.
> In the United States, even though pro-war demonstrators have been quoted as referring to anti-war protests as a "vocal minority", Gallup Polls updated September 14, 2007 state, "Since the summer of 2005, opponents of the war have tended to outnumber supporters. A majority of Americans believe the war was a mistake."
Wiki has a series of poll results on public opinion of Iraq during after the war. [1] In May 2003, 79% of Americans thought the war was justified, regardless of whether or not WMD existed. And by the time the war had kicked off 90% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely" that WMD would be found.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...
In the UK and AU, the two principal partners of the "coalition of the willing", few in the public felt the situation justified and the bulk of those with exposure to global policy, military intell, travel abroad etc. definitely felt it was a bogus war.
Tony Blair was all too aware the supporting intelligence was thin and inadequate at the time - which came out in followup Royal Commissions(?) (they had a big UK inquiry into the matter), and John Howard (AU) was happy to play along despite a lack of backing from ASIO et al on the intel as it was a treaty obligation for AU and not pushing back gave leverage for other US-AU deals.
Altogether it was much less a coalition of the willing than it was a tagging along of the bribed.
As far as I know that was the case here, and bound to happen a great deal.
I think of fake news as something else.
And Americans would tolerate this for approximately 0 seconds. Consider how we feel about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that died or were killed during our invasion of Iraq (high end figures putting it in the millions), contrasted against the 5000 Americans who died. It's an entirely different sort of care when speaking of people you have no connection to as opposed to your neighbor or even your own son dying. When its other people, the real cost isn't truly felt.
Any news story that keeps the good versus evil narrative going is desirable.
It is in the US's interest for Russia to deplete their military capability, and for Ukraine to not become part of Russia.
> The fact that America and NATO have been supporting the war rather than pursuing peace seals the argument.
How does NATO "pursue peace" in a conflict they aren't a party to? What exactly do you think they should do? One side of this war has the unilateral power to end it, and it ain't NATO, the US, or Ukraine.
But nobody wants to concede anything. So the war will continue, undoubtedly with plentiful more opportunities to find ourselves in WW3.
So I don't think anybody is anywhere near ready to concede. It's certainly going much worse for Russia than they expected, but being where we're at today is also far from what the US had in mind 9 months ago when this all started. It seems the most likely outcome for this war is a long, bloody, and expensive affair. The real issue is the specter of WW3 in the backdrop. There's an argument to be made that Zelensky sees that as a win condition (as per the topic of this thread), but fortunately it seems that neither the US nor Russia do. And they are the ones that get to decide if/when that happens.
Giving in to the nuclear and other blackmail that Russia uses will never get lasting peace.
All it will do is get Russia to invade again in the future. You only need to see, Moldova, Georgia, Crimea, and Donbas to see this.
The only real peace for this war is a peace where Russia retreats entirely from Ukraine, militarily defeated and it becomes clear to Russia that any future invasion will be met with an even stronger force.
Otherwise the little green men will keep appearing and the Russians will keep invading countries.
Who would push that story and then just let the news come out that it was actually Ukrainian?
I also haven’t seen anything to indicate it was anything but just bad reporting.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-news-russia-poland-miss...
But... they didn't. The people with the power put on their big boy pants and said "No, I don't think this is right", refused to engage with the outrage machine, and shared what intelligence they could to refute the story. And the new media retracted the piece within 24 hours and has not fired the author after an investigation.
Isn't that evidence that the system is working? Shouldn't you be celebrating it as a victory instead of complaining about things that didn't happen?
The one and only reason they did so is because the cost of this lie would have been too high. If the cost had simply been "Russia will be even more demonized" do you think, even for a second, that they would have "corrected the record"? And beyond this, also consider that the news sources running these stories had to realize the potentially massive implications of this. Yet they seemingly themselves did effectively 0 fact checking before running with it.
No, the system is most assuredly not working. The only system that is working is the desire to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction.
Isn't the much (!) simpler answer that the journalist had what he thought was a juicy scoop, the editors wanted to run it for clicks and eyeballs, and the system of checking and verification broke down. But that's just a mistake, and it happens everywhere in journalism. And it was corrected rapidly, by everyone involved.
You want this to be somehow morally different because of the "ZOMG WW3" situation, I guess? But I don't see how that works logically. People are going to make mistakes even in wartime, the question is if we trust folks in power to handle those mistakes correctly.
And, to repeat: people in power absolutely handled this responsibly. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, and I think we're much better off by rewarding that responsible use of power vs. screaming hyperbole.