Here is a novel notion or a notion for a novel...

The cold war spawned many strange and powerful weapons. Afterall there must not be a gap between our weapons and theirs.
When the US learned of psychic experiments by the Soviets all hell broke loose. We began all sorts of psychic research to narrow the gap of what was called psychic warfare.
Eventually a group was formed whose job was to mentally spy on the Soviets. Before long they were bragging that they were getting better than 50% success in describing places and things anywhere in the world by using a technique that we will call mental vision.

As it is with most organizations there was competative infighting.
A sub group of the CIA propaganda offices had a broader plan for psychic warfare. Their credo was perception is Reality. They determined that if enough people believed something was true , actual physical changes would take place to make it true, as well as motivating people to do your every bidding.

This notion was much sexier farther reaching than the psychic peeping toms passing along single bits of information. Within ten years the perception is reality folks won, and the mental visionaries were put out with the trash. Some of the mental vision people turned to the private sector and became a curious footnote in history.


Eventually all the elements like friends in high places and new media networks were poised to wage massive psychic warfare along with miniature troop deployments since perception is reality was viewed to be so powerful that actual troops only needed to be visible, like props in a movie, to make this new model of warfare work like a charm.

Along with a Pearl Harbor like event the premise for war was drummed up for a couple months and was advertised to be an ultimate display of shock and awe. In a couple more months the televised event was about to conclude with a couple final photo ops of a mission accomplished and the final symbolic fall of Saddam before cheering crowds.

There was a snag however. The shock wasn,t awing enough, the end of hostilities did not occur and there were no cheering crowds. What went wrong?

The perception is reality agents failed to realize that the technique while incredibly powerful...does not work with lies.
What happened with equal and opposite results was the complete reversal of all of their plans.