ABSTRACT
The manufacture of the ‘war’ myth has profound implications for any study of the political and military origins of the conflict and press representations. The ‘greatest battles since World War II’ were predicted and celebrated in the press, just as during the 1991 Gulf conflict. Secrecy feeds the myth-making. Alongside the ‘democratic’ state in both the US and UK there exists a secret and highly centralised state occupied by the massively over-resourced intelligence and security services, secret armies, and undercover police units. Most of US/UK imperialism advances essentially in secret. Both countries have deployed forces virtually every year since 1945 — most of them away from the glare of the media. The media’s focus on the ‘monstrous’, ‘evil’, global power of Saddam Hussein was from 1990 until his death in December 2006 an essential ingredient of the propaganda strategy to manufacture a credible enemy. Central to the manufacture of the war myth is its representation as clean, precise and humanitarian.
