U.S. to blame for post-truth era starting from Iraq war: The Guardian

LONDON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- The Iraq war, filled with lies concocted by the U.S. government, ushered in the post-truth era for the world, according to an opinion piece carried by The Guardian.

In the two years following the 9/11 attack, then U.S. President George W. Bush and his top officials publicly uttered at least 935 lies about the threat that then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, the article said on Tuesday, citing the Center for Public Integrity.

The U.S.-led invasion not only destroyed Iraq, but it displaced some 9 million people, killed at least 300,000 civilians by direct violence, and devastated Iraq's already precarious environment, it said.

The invasion also destabilized the region and is a leading cause for today's global migration crisis, it said.

The number of people displaced by all post-9/11 U.S. wars, at least 38 million people, exceeds the total displaced by every war since 1900, except World War II, it said, citing Brown University's Costs of War project notes.

The Iraq war ushered in a style of politics where truth is, at best, an inconvenience, it said.

The world is still reeling from the consequences of these lies and the institutions built on them, it added.