Iraq War and
Weapons of Mass Destruction
This example was recommended by Jim Luke and Jan Farmer.
Invading Iraq was justified, in part, by reports that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction (MWD); reports that have since been discredited. While it is true that Weapons of Mass Destruction were eventually found in Iraq, they were not the weapons he was reported to possess.
Google's Featured Snippets
When I was preparing this page, I did a Google search for "weapons of mass destruction iraq." The first link—emphasized as a Google Snippet—was to a highly partisan website.
According to Google, "When a user asks a question in Google Search, we might show a search result in a special featured snippet block at the top of the search results page. This featured snippet block includes a summary of the answer, extracted from a webpage, plus a link to the page, the page title and URL." The "featured snippet is that it is enhanced to draw user attention on the results page. When we recognize that a query asks a question, we programmatically detect pages that answer the user's question, and display a top result as a featured snippet in the search results." Please Note: The featured snippet does not need to come from a credible source to be selected by Google.
Even more concerning to me was that the vast majority of the first 140 entries were from partisan websites or websites that feature misleading news stories.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Eichenwald, Kurt. "Dick Cheney’s Biggest Lie." Newsweek. 19 May 2015.
MacAskill, Ewen. "Spy agencies 'Produced Flawed Information on Saddam's WMDs'." The Guardian. 6 July 2016.
Richelson, Jeffrey. "Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction." The National Security Archive, The George Washington University. 11 February 2004.
Taylor, Peter. "Iraq War: The Greatest Intelligence Failure in Living Memory." The Telegraph. 18 Mar 2013.
