When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war. So did many countries across the world. What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority would be not to vanquish Al Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost.
This mission could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention - a scenario of such devious brilliance that it gave rise to a second war against an enemy who did not attack America on 9/11; intimidated opponents at home and abroad into incoherence and impotence; and turned a presidential election into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery, Vietnam and 'moral values'.
In The Greatest Story Ever Sold, acclaimed columnist Frank Rich delivers a step-by-step chronicle of how skilfully the White House sold its story, and how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions - the mainstream news media - failed to do so.
