Section III: Bush’s Lie Was the Attack
- john raymond
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
We must dispense with the comforting fiction that war begins when the bombs fall. In asymmetric warfare, the war begins with the lie. The lie isn’t simply the justification for the war—it is the war. It is the offensive maneuver, the strategic blow, the cognitive disorientation inflicted upon a population. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration didn’t just lie to justify the invasion of Iraq. The administration used the lie as a form of attack on the American people themselves.
The Victims of the Lie
Yes, Iraq was a victim—ravaged by a war founded on fabrications. But the lie radiated outward. U.S. allies were misled. The global intelligence community was misused. And perhaps most damning of all: the American people were attacked by their own government through the asymmetric weapon of misinformation. The targets were their fear, their trust, and their rational judgment.
How the Lie Attacked
Step one: Manufacture Fear.
The Bush administration inundated the media with talk of mushroom clouds, phantom WMDs, and false links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. It didn’t matter that these claims were unsubstantiated. What mattered was that they landed—hard and repeatedly—on a psychologically unguarded post-9/11 public.
Step two: Manufacture Consent.
With fear established, consent was extracted. Opposition was smeared as treasonous. War became patriotic. Media outlets, burned by being left out of early access, learned to parrot the Pentagon line. Congress rubber-stamped the use of force. The decision to go to war was made in the fog of intentional fear.
Step three: Misalign the War Effort.
The real asymmetric threat—al-Qaeda—was slippery, adaptive, and hidden. But instead of evolving our strategy, the U.S. turned its gaze to Iraq: a bounded, bombable target. This misalignment wasn’t a mistake. It was the plan. A visible war sold better than a shadow war.
The Effects: Propaganda as Policy
This wasn’t just a case of political deception. It was the institutionalization of disinformation as a governing tool. Once the Bush administration saw that fear and lies could yield results, it didn't stop. The lie became routine. Truth became negotiable. And a population already reeling from 9/11 found itself living in a second reality—one crafted for obedience.
The shift was tectonic. Trust in institutions decayed. Media polarization accelerated. Political debate lost any shared epistemic foundation. From that chaos emerged a new principle of governance: the weaponization of unreality.
Strategic Consequences
This tactic—of lying to achieve strategic goals—didn't just hurt the public. It weakened the entire system. The United States became less able to detect real threats, because its sensors—its people, its press, its analysts—were fed garbage. Disinformation didn’t just mislead; it blinded.
Putin watched this unfold. He studied it. He learned that you don't need to outgun a superpower. You just need to teach it how to lie to itself. Trump inherited the same playbook and began to run it in overdrive: turning the lie inward as the only tool of governance.
As we transition to the next section, we must ask a deeper question: why lie to your own people? Why attack your own public’s understanding? The answer lies in the logic of regime security. The lie protects not the nation, but the men in power. It is not national security that demands deception. It is the fragility of leadership that demands it.
Coming next: Regime Security Over National Security.
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