You're not wrong, at least to me. However, the NYT isn't malicious in spreading falsehoods. At the time I didn't believe in the WMD issue from the get-go. Even if Iraq had them, why wouldn't it have used them earlier? It made no sense to me. I don't believe most educated people believed it. It seemed obvious even Colin Powell didn't believe it at the U.N. It was just an excuse.

The U.S. government wanted to settle with military means what it couldn't diplomatically. Very, very, very few people in the world follow geopolitics or can place Iraq on a map.

That doesn't mean the reasons behind the U.S. and coalitions' military were 100% evil. It's complicated. And complicated does not sell. Either politically or as news.

There aren't enough readers who will pay the journalism industry enough to really dig deep into stories. Of course, there are deep stories. But they're the exception, not the rule. If the NYT made enough money to get to the bottom of the WMD story I believe it would have. The problem is the public. They either don't care or don't want to know the truth (that the U.S. will end up killing thousands of civilians for oil interests). If you accept that view, then the Times, like most media outlets, will run with whatever PR the government puts out. 90% of geopolitical news is written by governments. Again, the public doesn't seem to want to pay for more.

If you want to know more you read writers like you, as I do. But we are a very small minority. Or back then, you read journals, like "Foreign Affairs".

The NYT did a great job telling a story of a U.S. missile making its way from Indiana to killing a family in Yemen. Unfortunately, most people will only buy the NYT to read about the World Cup, etc.