20 years ago when the Iraq war started I knew ‘elders’ who said it was all fake at the time. And they got this opinion just from watching the news coverage.

What stuck with me was the description that intelligence can support any story as long as you only pay attention to the bits you want. Decades of watching the same dog and pony show lets you see just a little behind the curtain.

hm. that's exactly my experience with my Ukrainian and Russian elders. they watched the news, made a couple of phone calls into Ukraine and Russia and didnmt believe the German media would run the stories as they did. "the Americans did it again", they all agreed.

The Vietnam war was another one of these fake incidents (the torpedo boats), used as an excuse for war.