But, and this is OT so maybe I'll get edited, but I don't know what you can possibly mean when you say:

"As nearly all the public response to their attempts to "sell the war" were negative, they could hardly have been using "mind control techniques" unless they were using mind control techniques that have been proven to be totally useless and ineffective."

In fact, only now is public reaction becoming negative. Public attempts to sell the war were horribly successful. Many people in this benighted country still are utterly convinced of Cheney's often reiterated lie which insisted on a connection between Al Queda and Iraq.

Their widely promulgated fictions were so succesfull in fact, that we ended up going to war, with the senate overwhelmingly voting to confirm the resolution to use force in Iraq.