Ni ibere-soke si ogun, awọn ifarahan nigbagbogbo n tan. Awọn iṣẹlẹ osise le dabi ẹni pe o nlọ ni itọsọna kan lakoko ti awọn oluṣe imulo ti wa ni ṣiṣi si ekeji. Lori akoko akoko tiwọn, awọn onimọ-jinlẹ Ile White ṣe imuse idoti ti ero gbogbo eniyan ti o da lori isọdọtun media ti n pọ si. Isakoso kan lẹhin ekeji ti lọ nipasẹ awọn iṣipopada ti gbigbe lori orin diplomatic lakoko ti o fi awọn okuta asia silẹ ni ọna si ogun.
Ní ọdún méje sẹ́yìn, Ààrẹ Clinton polongo pé ogun afẹ́fẹ́ NATO kan tí orílẹ̀-èdè Amẹ́ríkà ń darí lórí Yugoslavia ti bẹ̀rẹ̀ nítorí pé gbogbo ọ̀nà àlàáfíà láti bá ààrẹ Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ti dé òpin òpin. Isakoso Clinton ati awọn gbagede media AMẸRIKA kuna lati mẹnuba pe Washington ti fun Milosevic ni ipari-iṣoogun oogun majele ni titẹ itanran ti awọn adehun Rambouillet ti a dabaa - pẹlu Àfikún B ti n ṣalaye pe awọn ọmọ ogun NATO yoo ni ṣiṣe ailopin ti gbogbo Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
On Jan. 31, 2003 — five days before the ballyhooed speech by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to the U.N. Security Council — the president held a private Oval Office meeting with Tony Blair. Summing up the discussion, which occurred nearly two months before the invasion of Iraq, the British prime minister’s chief foreign policy adviser David Manning noted in a memo: ‘Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning.’ Meanwhile, President Bush and his top aides were still telling the public that they were pursuing all diplomatic channels in hopes of preventing war.
In late summer 2002, with momentum quickening toward an Iraq invasion, Newsweek foreign affairs columnist Fareed Zakaria urged the Bush administration to recognize the public-relations value of allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to spend some time in Iraq. ‘Even if the inspections do not produce the perfect crisis,’ he wrote optimistically, ‘Washington will still be better off for having tried because it would be seen to have made every effort to avoid war.’
That kind of macabre ritual was underway on April 10 when the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters: ‘The president has made it very clear that we’re working with the international community to find a diplomatic solution when it comes to the Iranian regime and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.’ The quote appeared the next morning in a New York Times news article under a headline that must have pleased the war planners at the White House: ‘Bush Insists on Diplomacy in Confronting a Nuclear Iran.’