Massive covert manipulation of the public

Two related questions: What caused the gasoline price spike of 2008? Why did the United States go to war with Iraq in 2003?

The two questions are related by "shouldn't have". The price of gasoline eventually came back down, and if we knew then what we know now about how the war turned out, the American people would not have permitted the war go forward.

The final decision of gasoline prices is of course determined by millions of consumers deciding whether to buy gasoline at a given price. But there seems to have been something else going on in the background that specifically caused the price spike. It doesn't seem to have been a sudden increase in demand, or a sudden decrease in supply, so the answer is not clear.

The final decision to go to war was of course determined by Congress, whose members depend on the votes of millions of constituents to remain in office. How did so many people get convinced that going to war was the right thing to do? The answer is not clear.

Conspiracy theorists would have us believe that a small faction (for example, hedge funds for one, Israel for the other) orchestrated the events and caused them to happen. But because the "final decision" is cast by millions of people, such a conspiracy would require the covert yet massive manipulation of the public to a degree I have not thought possible and would be frightening if it is. (Of course, advertising routinely overtly manipulates the public this way; the issue is the covertness: we still don't know if such manipulation occurred and if so who was behind it. )

Further study of these events is warranted.