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the news framing of those same events by the major media. Just prior to the “shock and awe” missile attack on Iraq, public support for the invasion peaked, with nearly two-thirds of Americans in favor of it. However, by January 2006, just less than three years later, 51% of the U.S. public believed the war in Iraq was a mistake, and 53% believed the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about Iraq’s possession of WMD (Moore, 2006). By December of 2006, almost two-thirds (62%) of the U.S. public believed that the war was a mistake (Hutcheson, 2006). Interestingly, the percentage of Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq at the start of the war was almost identical to the percentage who believed the war was a mistake four years later. Also, by September 2007, nearly half (49%) of the American public also believed that the war in Iraq had actually made the United States less safe from terrorism (Blow, 2008). Similarly, President Bush’s job approval rating fluctuated greatly over time. Riding the emotional tide of patriotism following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, his approval rating was 71% at the start of the Iraq war (Blow, 2008). By March 2008, five years after he launched the invasion of Iraq, Bush’s job approval rating had plummeted to 31%. Interestingly, the forty-point drop in popularity experienced by President G. W. Bush was almost identical to the drop experienced by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam war (Blow, 2008). In summary, the fluctuations in both presidential approval and public support for the Iraq war, which mirrored fluctuations in the volume of news coverage and the news framing of the Iraq war, demonstrate the volatility criterion of a moral panic. Additional Evidence of an Elite-Engineered Moral Panic An examination of prewar events and the facts made public since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 help to further establish the five criteria of a moral panic. By July of 2008, more than five years after the invasion and occupation began, no weapons of mass destruction had been found, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had reported that, in all likelihood, there never were any WMD in Iraq, which is exactly what the U.N. weapons inspectors had said before the invasion (Sniffen, 2007). The same Senate panel report also stated that there never was a relationship between Iraq and Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. In fact, Saddam Hussein was “distrustful” of , and felt threatened by, Osama Bin Laden. Conversely, Osama Bin Laden considered Saddam Hussein to be a corrupt Muslim whom he despised (Strobel & Talev, 2006). In an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes in March 2004, former counterterrorism czar under the Bush administration, Richard Clarke, stated, “There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.” In other words, Saddam Hussein and Iraq had no involvement in the attacks of 9/11, How the Bush Administration Sold the Iraq War 95 which were solely orchestrated by al Qaeda, despite the Bush administration’s persistent claims to the contrary in its prewar campaign for invading Iraq. A formal investigation by the U.S. Senate also concluded that the Bush administration had used false information to mislead the public about Iraq. In 2006, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported that the Bush administration had used faulty intelligence assessments to justify invading Iraq, and furthermore, the administration knew in 2002 that the intelligence was faulty, based on repeated warnings from the C.I.A. and Pentagon, but used it anyway in their march toward war (Strobel & Talev, 2006). Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “The [Bush] administration ignored warnings prior to the war about the veracity of the intelligence it trumpeted publicly to support its case that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States” (Strobel & Talev, 2006, p. 16A). For example, President Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that “Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons,” which became a key justification for the invasion two months later, turned out to be untrue (Sniffen, 2007, p. 6A). By 2002, the Bush administration was fixated on gathering evidence that would support its policy argument for war with Iraq (Clark, 2006). However, the quality and credibility of the sources—and even the validity of the information obtained from those sources—was relatively unimportant to the Bush administration. This conclusion is...

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