Misinformed: Implications of Foreign Influence on the Information Environment that Launched Operation Iraqi Freedom

Abstract

This article examines the means through which disinformation made its way into major media outlets and the U.S. intelligence community in the months preceding the 2003 United States-led invasion of Iraq. Most of the relevant literature tends to frame this period in terms of failure, directed at either intelligence producers or consumers. Instead, this study approaches the issue from a perspective of success—namely that of a foreign disinformation campaign—which may reveal instructive lessons overlooked in previous research. Despite its role in launching the Iraq War (2003–11), disinformation remained ill-defined and shallowly analyzed in the public sphere in the years between the end of the Cold War in 1991 and Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As international tensions rise and the U.S. Joint force leans more heavily on open-source information in its operations, it is imperative that the American people, intelligence analysts, and policymakers understand how the environment has been exploited to build false consensus during periods of heightened political instability.