Eh, I think they meant the general colour of "not quite social media" that was present at the time: chain emails and blogs. But the patriotic fervor was nuts. While there were substantial anti-war protests, that was very much not the majority opinion, and people were "cancelled" over opposing the war.

It was inevitable. I remember, in the UK mid-afternoon after we'd found out about the first plane hitting the first tower, saying that would be the end of the Palestinians. Then the second plane hit. America would have to have reprisals, and Iraq was the target.

Mind you, the PNAC (Project for a New American Century; that era's version of project 2025, now quite hard to find on the Internet) always did want to go to war with Iran, and Iraq was a convenient vector for that.