Framing Iraq: Threat inflation in the marketplace of values

After the invasion of Iraq, in the wake of the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction or any link between Iraq and Al Qaeda or the events of 9/11, accusations of “threat inflation” became commonplace, with scholars arguing that the Bush administration pumped up the Iraq threat beyond the facts available and made arguments based on far-fetched worst case scenarios (Kaufmann 2004; Cirincione 2005; Prados 2004; Hersh 2003). Worse, many observers believe the administration was extremely successful in its efforts to build public support for war on false grounds.