A Case Study in the Manipulation of Mass Opinion

Scott McConnell, executive editor of The American Conservative, says the story of how the Neo-cons "turned a terrorist attack on the US by one group into a rationale for an assault on an entirely different state will fascinate historians for many years to come."

He suggests that up to 70% of US citizens believed the neo-con lies because "few people want to believe they have been deceived."

"That belief is the fruit of one of the great bait-and-switch efforts of modern history, a collective endeavour by administration officials, hawkish television pundits and squads of neo-conservative columnists and editorialists. Their work should long be regarded as a case study in the manipulation of mass opinion -- comparable, though of course different, to what took place in the mass dictatorships of the 1930s. "