The use of propaganda and disinformation by all parties during the Gulf War was widespread and effective in achieving its purposes. The Coalition forces succeeded in giving and maintaining the impression that this was a "clean" war in which the high-tech weapons resulted in negligible human casualties. In order to promote this impression wide use was made in press briefings of video film demonstrating the accuracy of new weapons, military spokespersons avoided discussion of the human cost of the war. The phrase "collateral damage" was used to describe civilian casualties. In spite of the fact that up to 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and an unknown number of civilians may have been killed in the hostilities, there was little coverage in the media of the horrifying and "unpalatable" aspects of the war.
Despite having dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on Laos from 1962 to 1973 than during World War II, the USA long denied or ignored the consequences of this bombing by asserting that bombs were dropped on uninhabited jungles. The remaining lethal debris in agricultural lands continues to create victims amongst farm workers there.