War on Iraq Reads Like One Big 'Wag the Dog' Tale

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Columnist Paul Krugman compares the war on Iraq to the 1997 movie Wag the Dog, saying that "if you don't think it bears a resemblance to recent events, you're in denial" because "much of the supposed justification for the war turns out to have been fictional. The war was justified to the public by links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. No evidence of the Qaeda link has ever surfaced, and no W.M.D.'s that could have posed any threat to the U.S. or its allies have been found. ... Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told Vanity Fair that the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken for 'bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.' ... For the time being, the public doesn't seem to care - or even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of
Americans either believe that W.M.D.'s have been found, or
aren't sure."