Deception and the Iraq War.

When do leaders resort to deception to sell wars to their publics? To the extent that the academic literature has dealt with the issue, the focus has been on the Iraq War and the failure of the marketplace of ideas in that case. Chaim Kaufmann, most prominently, has argued that the Bush administration inflated the threat in the run-up to the war and could have not secured public support for it otherwise. In this paper, I argue that the focus on the Iraq War is misplaced in three ways. First, the deceptions that theBush administration resorted to in the run-up to the war were modest by historical standards. Members of the administration did exaggerate the imminence of the threat, but were quite transparent about their intention to go to war and about their reasons fordoing so. This is in contrast to other cases, such as the Vietnam War, where the public only became aware that major war was in the offing after the fighting had started. Second, it is not clear that deception was decisive in building support for the war. The public, after all, was predisposed toward regime change well before the administration began its public relations campaign. Moreover, leading Democrats in Congress were aware of the gaps in the administration's case, yet chose to authorize the use of forceanyway after only perfunctory debate. Like the administration, they expected the war to result in a quick and decisive victory and so had few incentives to register their dissent. If they had anticipated the protracted war to follow, the Democrats would have beenmore likely to challenge the administration's claims. Finally, the administration would have been more likely to resort to large-scale deception had the marketplace of ideas not failed. If public opposition had been more robust, leading officials would have been forced to take evasive measures, like renouncing the use of force and manufacturing pretexts, lest they provoke a backlash. I conclude, on these grounds, that deception is likely to play a more decisive role in a future war with Iran than it did in the one with Iraq. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]