What was the most damaging conspiracy theory in U.S. history?

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Few people dumb down our discourse worse than conspiracy theorists. For these constant internet trolls, there has never been a terrorist attack, a school or movie theater shooting or even a legitimate election. Ever. In their paranoid minds, every tragedy or human action is always a government-orchestrated plot to further the mind-controlling agenda of our global overlords, or something. They engage not in intellectual debate, but fetishism.

These types of conspiracy theorists are annoying, but that’s about it. Most of the damage they do is to themselves, their careers, reputations and their characteristic inability to have normal conservations with normal people.

But there have been conspiracy theorists of a different sort who’ve done real damage.

In 2003, a majority of Americans supported the United States invasion of Iraq, due in large part to a widely held belief that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Why would they believe this?

Because our government led them to believe it.

President George W. Bush never said outright that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. But he heavily implied it. Repeatedly. Vice President Dick Cheney went a step further and basically said that Saddam was behind 9/11, however creative he might have been with his rhetoric.

What both Bush and Cheney insisted was that Saddam had an “operational link” with al-Qaeda. If the president and vice president were saying that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, it made sense to many Americans that Hussein was culpable for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The president and vice president wouldn’t just outright lie to us, right?

Cheney’s primary “source” for this alleged 9/11-Saddam connection was the work of Weekly Standard contributor Stephen Hayes. The Weekly Standard published a story by Hayes in 2003 titled, “Case Closed: The U.S. government’s secret memo detailing cooperation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.” Hayes wrote, “Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda — perhaps even for Mohamed Atta — according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.”

Hayes concluded, “There can no longer be any serious argument [to the contrary] about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.” Hayes would release a book in 2004 called, what else, “The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America.”

Newsweek investigated Hayes claims and determined, “the memo doesn’t actually contain much ‘new’ intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts whom [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J.] Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda ‘connection’ in order to better justify a U.S. invasion.”

In the years that followed, it would become a consensus that the Bush administration simply made the whole thing up.

This was a conspiracy theory, nothing more, nothing less. They manufactured their own facts based on little more than wild speculation, to make a case for war to an emotional, post-9/11 America. Conspiracy theories are often fueled by fear and this was no different. Eventually caught in their deception, Bush and Cheney were forced to backpedal furiously. The administration would eventually pretend this whole episode never happened.

But it did happen. The lie that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 was a significant part of what took a nation to war, led to deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, trillions spent and created a vacuum that today has been filled by ISIS and other extremists.

Still, none of these conspiracy theorists paid a professional price. Bush retired comfortably. Cheney is still considered an influential foreign policy voice in the Republican Party. Hayes remains a respected contributor to Fox News and Weekly Standard.

Completely shameless, Cheney even toyed with the idea that his destructive conspiracy theory might’ve been true as late as 2011.

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No doubt, there will likely always be unrepentant hawks willing to make the case that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, in the same way 9/11 “truthers” are absolutely convinced that the U.S. government brought down the World Trade Center in 2001.

For both Saddam-was-behind-9/11 truthers and conventional 9/11 truthers, faith in these conspiracy theories will always dictate their facts.

This is fine for lonely people sitting in their mother’s basement. It has been tragic when promoted by those in power who have done irreparable damage to our nation.