Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | When are facts facts? Not in a war
Note that the MTF story came initially from the highest levels of the US government - Bush and Myers. The try runs for around 24 hours and then gets quietly disavowed at a much lower level - the unfortunate general at CENTCOM. That's a really, really effective way to keep all sorts of propaganda claims in play without ever being held to account. After all, they trotted out the MTF in February and independent journalists disavowed it then.

A cynical government that kept spinning up these untrue claims long enough might, for example, persuade its electorate that 19 of the 11 September hijackers were Iraqis not Saudis.



TERROR CAMP



Claim

Thursday 27 March, 12.59am

US President George Bush says US troops had destroyed a terrorist camp in northern Iraq but fails to elaborate during a briefing about the progress of the Iraqi invasion. "Day by day, Saddam Hussein is losing his grip on Iraq," Bush said.



Claim reinforced

Sunday 30 March, 5.07pm

More reports that allied forces secure much of north of Iraq and overrun a notorious terrorist camp alleged to be a haven for al-Qaida militants. Washington accuses the Ansar al-Islam group, believed to be behind the camp, of working to make chemical weapons with help from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.



Claim amplified

Monday 31 March

Papers report that US forces seize the chemical weapons training camp in Ansar al-Islam, in northern Iraq. Sun splashes with the story and says war justified now that Saddam Hussein's weapons of horror had been discovered. Veteran UK intelligence expert Chris Dobson says the deadly poison ricin found recently in London most likely came from the camp and was evidence of Saddam's links with terrorists intent on striking Britain.



Admission claim never verified

Tuesday 1 April, 1.39pm

A US commander in the Gulf, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, tells a news conference that troops had yet to find any banned weapons of mass destruction in captured Iraqi territory. US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld says Iraq's banned weapons are stockpiled in Baghdad and Tikrit.