The press release clearly had an agenda. You'll note that the press release was not put out by the study authors, nor were the juicy quotes connecting the study to the Iraq War by the study author, Dominic Johnson of Princeton (maybe coauthored with Tierney, we don't know from the press release). They were from some other academic, Peter Turchin at U-Conn, who NewScientist.com found to comment on Johnson's work.
I'll grant the press release was clearly meant to get a political point across, but you were dismissing the _study_, and indicated doubts about the author's entire body of work, based on that press release, which may or may not have taken the tone the author wanted (it's generally up to the journal to hype the article as they wish; I've seen authors cringe at what gets done to sell their work).
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Press Release
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- The "Mission Accomplished" Syndrome