[dragonwriter]

> Iraq is an interesting example because we only found out it was false after the fact.

Key US/UK claims were debunked by UN weapons inspectors in the same UN hearing where they were presented.

That the “Winnebagos of Mass Destruction” weren't the mobile WMD labs they were portrayed as (and that the US and UK knew because the UK had literally sold them to Iraq) was also also public before the war.

> In the run up to the war, perhaps questioning the sources and information provided by the government would have been labeled fake news

No, worse, it would just be ignored by large masses of the public who would believe the government anyway, and even forget that they'd been given repeated information about how they were being lied to.