You couldn’t be more wrong. It was VERY prevelant back then. It just never got the news coverage it gets now. In the late 70s/ early 80s, the general populace was more concerned about the U.S.S.R., and the Middle East was some far away land with nothing in it.
And I’m sure the survivors of the Iran-Iraq war might disagree with the notion that WMD didn’t exist in the 80s.