Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD

[Guest mp3some]

Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents _ up from 36 percent last year _ said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

"I'm flabbergasted," said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.

"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.

Timing may explain some of the poll result. Two weeks before the survey, two Republican lawmakers, Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum and Michigan's Rep. Peter Hoekstra, released an intelligence report in Washington saying 500 chemical munitions had been collected in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

"I think the Harris Poll was measuring people's surprise at hearing this after being told for so long there were no WMD in the country," said Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware.

But the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that these abandoned shells, many found in ones and twos, were 15 years old or more, their chemical contents were degraded, and they were unusable as artillery ordnance. Since the 1990s, such "orphan" munitions, from among 160,000 made by Iraq and destroyed, have turned up on old battlefields and elsewhere in Iraq, ex-inspectors say. In other words, this was no surprise.

"These are not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," said Scott Ritter, the ex-Marine who was a U.N. inspector in the 1990s. "They weren't deliberately withheld from inspectors by the Iraqis."

Conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, who trumpeted Hoekstra's announcement in his syndicated column, complained in an interview that the press "didn't give the story the play it deserved." But in some quarters it was headlined.

"Our top story tonight, the nation abuzz today ..." was how Fox News led its report on the old, stray shells. Talk-radio hosts and their callers seized on it. Feedback to blogs grew intense. "Americans are waking up from a distorted reality," read one posting.

Other claims about supposed WMD had preceded this, especially speculation since 2003 that Iraq had secretly shipped WMD abroad. A former Iraqi general's book _ at best uncorroborated hearsay _ claimed "56 flights" by jetliners had borne such material to Syria.

But Kull, Massing and others see an influence on opinion that's more sustained than the odd headline.

"I think the Santorum-Hoekstra thing is the latest 'factoid,' but the basic dynamic is the insistent repetition by the Bush administration of the original argument," said John Prados, author of the 2004 book "Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War."

Administration statements still describe Saddam's Iraq as a threat. Despite the official findings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has allowed only that "perhaps" WMD weren't in Iraq. And Bush himself, since 2003, has repeatedly insisted on one plainly false point: that Saddam rebuffed the U.N. inspectors in 2002, that "he wouldn't let them in," as he said in 2003, and "he chose to deny inspectors," as he said this March.

The facts are that Iraq _ after a four-year hiatus in cooperating with inspections _ acceded to the U.N. Security Council's demand and allowed scores of experts to conduct more than 700 inspections of potential weapons sites from Nov. 27, 2002, to March 16, 2003. The inspectors said they could wrap up their work within months. Instead, the U.S. invasion aborted that work.

As recently as May 27, Bush told West Point graduates, "When the United Nations Security Council gave him one final chance to disclose and disarm, or face serious consequences, he refused to take that final opportunity."

"Which isn't true," observed Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a scholar of presidential rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania. But "it doesn't surprise me when presidents reconstruct reality to make their policies defensible." This president may even have convinced himself it's true, she said.

continues...

[Guest mp3some]

Americans have heard it. A poll by Kull's WorldPublicOpinion.org found that seven in 10 Americans perceive the administration as still saying Iraq had a WMD program. Combine that rhetoric with simplistic headlines about WMD "finds," and people "assume the issue is still in play," Kull said.

"For some it almost becomes independent of reality and becomes very partisan." The WMD believers are heavily Republican, polls show.

Beyond partisanship, however, people may also feel a need to believe in WMD, the analysts say.

"As perception grows of worsening conditions in Iraq, it may be that Americans are just hoping for more of a solid basis for being in Iraq to begin with," said the Harris Poll's David Krane.

Charles Duelfer, the lead U.S. inspector who announced the negative WMD findings two years ago, has watched uncertainly as TV sound bites, bloggers and politicians try to chip away at "the best factual account," his group's densely detailed, 1,000-page final report.

"It is easy to see what is accepted as truth rapidly morph from one representation to another," he said in an e-mail. "It would be a shame if one effect of the power of the Internet was to undermine any commonly agreed set of facts."

The creative "morphing" goes on.

As Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas battled in Lebanon on July 21, a Fox News segment suggested, with no evidence, yet another destination for the supposed doomsday arms.

"ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH'S HANDS?" asked the headline, lingering for long minutes on TV screens in a million American homes.

Posted on 08/08/06 | Views 1513

Play of words, play of politics, fact twisting and misleading media.

Just another day in washington.

[Guest mursa]

lol.......ignorance sure is rampant in this country .

[Guest trancepriest]

So you mean to tell me that Iraq doesn't have any yellow cakes? That sucks man. :

[Guest sross]

By definition, half the population are of below average intelligence so the results are hardly surprising.

[Bling]

"ummmmm yep cousin jethro have u heard da news. i heard from this guy down at my wife/cousin''s bar dat ERAQ had WMD's hidden away in dem mountains.

i say we should find em and drink dem sonavbitches cuz it sure does sound tasty .... :P"

[Guest slamminshaun]

By definition, half the population are of below average intelligence so the results are hardly surprising.

What does intelligence have to do with this poll? I guess Bill Clinton is a total dunce because I can point out about 100 quotes where he referred to Saddam having WMD's.

[Guest rhythmburn]

hussein used them on the kurds....so he *DID* have them at some point

[Guest Gladius]

any moron who thinks he didn't have WMD's is an ignorant retard.... if the guy was refusing the weapons inspectors from doing routine inspections in his factories, he was doing something wrong....

its like those babies who cry about the patriot act.... if your not doing anything wrong or stupid than who gives a crap if the government listens to what your talking about...

qq more carebears

[Guest jamu]

Okay gladius so the fact that our top generals, our top CIA officals, and all of the top intelligence agencies knew that he didn't have WMD makes us retarded for saying he didn't. But hey your kind always was interested in driving mustangs, waving the confedrate flags, screaming theology instead of democracy, conspiracy theories, and sleeping with their aunts and uncles then really understanding what's going on in the world. But hey try and keep to your Christian Coallition kind. The rest of us will keep reading journal articles and newspapers rather then comic books.

[Guest rhythmburn]

Okay gladius so the fact that our top generals, our top CIA officals, and all of the top intelligence agencies knew that he didn't have WMD makes us retarded for saying he didn't. But hey your kind always was interested in driving mustangs, waving the confedrate flags, screaming theology instead of democracy, conspiracy theories, and sleeping with their aunts and uncles then really understanding what's going on in the world. But hey try and keep to your Christian Coallition kind. The rest of us will keep reading journal articles and newspapers rather then comic books.

do you think that he ever had these weapons?

[Guest Gladius]

Okay gladius so the fact that our top generals, our top CIA officals, and all of the top intelligence agencies knew that he didn't have WMD makes us retarded for saying he didn't. But hey your kind always was interested in driving mustangs, waving the confedrate flags, screaming theology instead of democracy, conspiracy theories, and sleeping with their aunts and uncles then really understanding what's going on in the world. But hey try and keep to your Christian Coallition kind. The rest of us will keep reading journal articles and newspapers rather then comic books.

First of all they don't "know" that Iraq didn't have WMD's they may THink they didn't but there had to be a reason that saddam didn't let weapons inspectors in the country... and I guess i found one of those carebears eh? keep preaching your BS and keeping this country divided into the people who know whats going on and the people who are in denile about it all....

P.s. and the only aunts I am sleeping with are yours :

[Guest jamu]

Yeah, but he had lost them all during the first middle east war, and then the half life of some of that stuff isn't really as long as people think it to be. Plus with the sanctions that he had imposed on him, I wouldn't be surprised if he sold some off to Iran just to try to keep his personal empire going. But I am not surprised that by the time that we got there again for war he didn't have any. When I read the reports on news channels about what other countries like Germany, France, and Isreal were saying, I doubted that they had WMD's. And when the Plame thing became public I was pretty damn sure then that they didn't have any. And now look. Thousands of American lives 10's of thousands of civilian lives later we have a civil war, no weapons of mass destruction, alienated or commrades, our reputation as a leading nation, our values as a democracy, and our economy as a whole. This will be a war to regret. Sadly, we should have paid attention to Iran and didn't because of this goverments ignorance.

[Guest jamu]

Okay gladius so the fact that our top generals, our top CIA officals, and all of the top intelligence agencies knew that he didn't have WMD makes us retarded for saying he didn't. But hey your kind always was interested in driving mustangs, waving the confedrate flags, screaming theology instead of democracy, conspiracy theories, and sleeping with their aunts and uncles then really understanding what's going on in the world. But hey try and keep to your Christian Coallition kind. The rest of us will keep reading journal articles and newspapers rather then comic books.

First of all they don't "know" that Iraq didn't have WMD's they may THink they didn't but there had to be a reason that saddam didn't let weapons inspectors in the country... and I guess i found one of those carebears eh? keep preaching your BS and keeping this country divided into the people who know whats going on and the people who are in denile about it all....

P.s. and the only aunts I am sleeping with are yours :

Dude STFU you have no idea what your talking about obviously. You need to start reading something other then comic books and vogue. And yes we did. Our president was warned about yellow cake well in advance and yes we did.

People like you remind me why our country has a republican in office. :

[Guest Gladius]

wait let me guess, you go along with that attorney that says her egyptian clients weren't guilty of terrorist actions when authorities found 25,000$ cash 600 cell phones, flight plans and airport security print outs in their car? You are the type of person that reminds me of why this country is so damn ignorant taking the constitution and repeating it verbatum...

[Guest jamu]

Brilliant :

Have you ever thought of applying for the Darwin awards. I am sure that with plenty of practice you would make the 10 ten list. :

[Guest Gladius]

no comment... no point in arguing with a middle class retard like yourself

[Guest swirlundergrounder]

Why are we still arguing about this??? This topic was so 3 months ago...

[Guest jamu]

Because ignorance lives like a hemorrhagic fever.

[Guest slamminshaun]

This thread is so 2004. :

[Guest Gladius]

This thread is so 2004. :

yepp, and Jamu's approval rating is so much less than Bush's

[Guest slamminshaun]

This thread is so 2004. :

yepp, and Jamu's approval rating is so much less than Bush's

At least Jamu will win Iran's electoral votes. ;D

[Guest Gladius]

This thread is so 2004. :

yepp' date=' and Jamu's approval rating is so much less than Bush's

[/quote']

At least Jamu will win Iran's electoral votes. ;D

pwned!

[Guest Cosmigonon]

This thread is so 2004. :

LMFAO

yepp' date=' and Jamu's approval rating is so much less than Bush's

[/quote']

At least Jamu will win Iran's electoral votes. ;D

[Guest jamu]

This thread is so 2004. :

LMFAO

yepp, and Jamu's approval rating is so much less than Bush's

At least Jamu will win Iran's electoral votes. ;D

Hey you guys are more the Iranian types not believing in constitutional rights, going to war for personal profit, more interested in a theology in then a democracy, pushingn for wiretaps on the general public without warrants, outing your own CIA agents, electing supreme court judges of faith basis and friendships as opposed to qualifications. Hmm if anyone where to be voted new Iranian persident it would be gladius or Shaun. Seeing as that I still believe in due process and the constitutional process. But he call me old fashion and a believer in Ben Franklin. Something obviously Shaun and Gladius no nothing about.