Lingering confusion over WMD?

July 25, 2006

This item, from today’s Washington Times, has to be wrong.

Half of Americans now say [tag]Iraq[/tag] had [tag]weapons of mass destruction[/tag] when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a [tag]Harris[/tag] [tag]poll[/tag] finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both “substantial” and “surprising” in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.

To be sure, those are the actual results from the poll. The new Harris poll really did find that 50% of U.S. adults believe that Iraq had [tag]WMD[/tag] when the U.S. launched an invasion over three years ago. And this isn’t one of those Harris Interactive polls that are conducted online — according to the summary, this was a telephone poll conducted earlier this month with a decent sample size.

Was the wording of the question confusing? Not really. The poll read a series of statements and asked poll respondents to say whether they believe the statement is true or not true. Presented with “Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded,” 50% said the statement was true — up from 36% in a Harris poll conducted in February 2005.

I’m going to have to assume that the poll is simply wrong. It’s just not possible that, after all of these years, 50% of the country believes there were WMD in Iraq, and that number has gone up over the last year.

Sure, our leaders have lied about the issue. And sure, there’s widespread confusion about reality among Fox News viewers. But that still doesn’t explain a result like this one.

If there’s a rational explanation for such widespread ignorance, I’m anxious to hear it. The more likely answer is that the poll is some kind of bizarre outlier, right? Right?

Looks like the Santorum-Hoekstra axis of idiocy has had its intended effect.

  • i agree with KCinDC that that must have been a factor, but here’s my guess: as conditions in iraq worsen, the american public may be desperately hoping that there was a legitimate basis for this failure.

  • I would love to see a poll comparison, prominently displayed in the MSM, between all the other NATO nations and the US on this particular question. If the 50% of Americans that answered this poll in the affirmative realized that a huge majority of the Western World totally disagreed with them, they may begin to realize that they’re following the wrong herd and hopefully question their own news sources.

  • If this is not some kind of bizarre outlier then we may be in deeper trouble than we thought. If the combination of Administration lies and Faux News megaphoning is also wrapped in some kind of mass psychological “my country right or wrong” self defensive response to the bombardment of bad news in the Middle East and everywhere else, then we may truly experience the unthinkable this fall. Are the people who don’t have time to follow what’s really going on merely latching onto some way-after-the-fact rationalization of their country’s monumental/criminal blunders? I sure hope not.

  • Unfortuantely, I think the poll might just be right. Many people I’ve talked to believe that the discovery of old sarin gas containers means that there really were weapons of mass destruction. I’ve had this discussion with my brother (a staunch Bush supporter, but he really can’t give me any reasons other than he just didn’t like Kerry) many times. The spin has worked. I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of people like to have their news and viewpoints spoon fed to them. My brother does not read newspapers or news stories on the internet. He takes his clues from TV, sadly mostly from Fox News, and conserative talk radio like Rush Limbaugh. If you are bombarded by conservative propaganda day in and day out, with nothing to offset the right-wing spin (and very little ambition to find out otherwise), than you will happily believe anything that is spewed out.

    (Whew! Please forgive the rant. It just gets so frustrating trying to have a discussion/debate with someone who does the intellectual equivalent of putting his hands over his ears and shouting LALALALALA)

  • The rational explanation is rationalization.

    We Americans are good people, so we couldn’t possibly be to blame for the disaster that is Iraq. How did we get into this mess? There MUST have been a reason we invaded, because America would never just destroy a country for no reason. WMD? Oh yeah, that must be it. Didn’t somebody say there were WMD?

    Admitting that the real reason is that we were duped by power-mad liars and ideologues is too hard on the ego for many people.

  • Who needs facts when you have faith?

    It doesn’t matter whether we ever had them. In my heart, I know that Saddam had tons of biological weapons, and was within seconds of sending a nuclear bomb to blow up the petting zoo in Brown County, Indiana, on one of those unmanned aerial thingies.

    My President told me so. And he’s a man of God, and would never lie.

    So you can take your facts and put ’em where the sun don’t shine.

  • Jeez…perhaps this is ultimately related to the ubiquity of Faux News. Things seem a bit different now that I’m in the northeast, but during a 3-year period of living in the south, you’d see FN literally everywhere: in bars, medical offices, even the lounge of a golf course.

    Eventually the stuff seeps in…

  • Sadly, this sadministration knows that a lie repeated often, with a straight face, becomes a fact in a world where people want to trust the government and only listen intermittently to what’s going on. This technique is the bread and blood of these criminals. It works. People would want to believe that those WMDs were found eventually; just as the criminals said. And they are relentless and shameless in the repetition of this lie. That is how their “reality” is created.

  • This reminds me of a line from the Spongebob episode I watched this morning:

    “Don’t stand next to the squirrel, Billy, you’ll catch it’s stupid.”

    Replace “squirrel” with “Santorum”, and it would fit perfectly

  • Remember boys and girls, this is the same country where most people say the bible is true ! Our tabloid ‘eddy-cated’ folks know that it was the reason we invaded. Let’s not get them confused with abstract issues of truth.

  • My two cents:
    The poll question is flawed as it does not note any difference between small amounts of WMD and the sizeable quantities noted in the run up.
    I am liberal and anti-bush/neocon. But if asked if there were ANY WMD in Iraq, I would have to answer YES, altough a very small amount of old and obsolete WMD.
    Jim K

  • I wish the question was:

    Did you believe in 2002 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

    Do you believe that 1990 era ineffective saran and mustard gas artillery shells were the weapons of mass destruction the Administration described in 2002?

    Do you believe today that in 2002 Iraq had the weapons of mass destruction the Administration claimed they did despite the fact that no evidence of their existence has been found?

    Do you believe the claims based on Syrian exiles statements that the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were moved into Syria with Russian assistance?

    Try those on for size polster boy!

  • Since I’m quoting liberally from popular American culture,
    what I wish a Democrat on the Senate floor would say:

    “Senator Santorum, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this country is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no re-election, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  • The implications of this poll are just too depressing to think about, but I’m not all that surprised. When I talk to people about the massive civilian casualties in Lebanon, and they justify the carnage by citing the capture of two soldiers, I guess I’m not surprised that a few empty CW canisters are transmogrified into “Weapons of Mass Destruction!” Thus, everything bad that might have happened to Iraq or Iraqis in recent years is their own fault.

  • The result on WMD is not that surprising when viewed in the context of the answers to the other questions in the table from which the WMD result was taken. I’ve reproduced it below.
    The first three response indicate that Americans are hoping that the whole Iraq adventure is not a huge mistake. Are Iraqis better off today? Absolutely not. But there is probably enough uncertainty about the situation in Iraq to allow people to delude themselves. No informed person would claim that Iraq had “ties” to Al Qaeda, but again there is enough uncertainty to allow people to hold on to the belief. Finally, no one can know with absolute certainty how history will view our Iraq adventure. Again the response to this question show that Americans are unwilling to admit to themselves that Iraq was a mistake Further the percentage with regard to the first three questions have been stable over time. There have been no definitive reports on the issues in the first three cases unlike the Duelfer report on WMD. Hence it has been easier for Americans to delude themselves. I really do think that Santorum and Hoekstra muddied the waters on WMD just enough to allow people let their hopes triumph over reality.

    Here is another oddity of the survey. Only 37% of Americans think that Iraq will develop a stable democracy(Table 1.), yet 63% think America will be credited with bring democracy to Iraq. How the hell can you reconcile that?
    Table 3.
    The Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein.
    October 2004 76%
    February 2005 76%
    July 2006 72%

    Saddam Hussein had strong links with Al Qaeda.
    October 2004 62%
    February 2005 64%
    July 2006 64%

    History will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq.
    October 2004 63%
    February 2005 64%
    July 2006 55%

    Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.
    October 2004 38%
    February 2005 36%
    July 2006 50%

  • It’s another symbiance between Hitler’s Reich and KG’s Reich; a lot of people during the 1940s believed that National Socialism was winning a war against the entire planet, and a fair number of them still believed it when the tanks outside their windows were rolling West instead of East, and bore Red Stars instead of Black Swaztikae. The “Big Lie” has always worked for authoritarian dictatorships, to an extent, right up until the final hours. It is no different for Herr Bush’s government today than it was for Herr Hitler’s government sixty-some-odd years ago….

  • I’m inclined to believe that ordinary Americans are not comfortable living with cognitive dissonance. It is far easier to believe that we went to war because WMDs were posed to fire, than it is to believe all the other reasons that the bush administration has trotted out since then.

    How else can Americans justify endangering so many troops for so many years?

  • The ignorance of Americans is amazing. No wonder a mediocre C-student who can’t even pronounce the word “nuclear” gets elected President.

  • This is very troubling. Reading the poll results, way more than half of us simply haven’t been paying attention. At all.

    “64% say Saddam had “strong links” with al Qaeda”

    If the lying bastards can keep this number up above 50%, we are screwed. To Joe America, if Saddam had “strong links” with al Qaeda, then the war was “worth it”.

    That lie has got to GO.

  • The Republiskunks are taking advantage of the fact that Joe American’s attention span doesn’t extend past the weekend and his memory isn’t much better. People watch propaganda TV on Fox and other “more balanced networks” (HA!) as well as “patriotic” shows on the History Channel, Military Channel and shamefully, even the National Geographic Channel. Soon, polls will show a rise in people linking 9/11 to Iraq also. Does anyone doubt Shrub is glad for the War in Lebanon to distract from the daily death toll in his War in Iraq?

  • It’s at least, in part, a result of our Press and hate radio having adopted the Bush Crime Family’s “Good v. Evil” mantra — Iraq enemy, enemy bad, bad WMD, ergo Iraq WMD. Not logical, of course, but appealing to the slam-wrasslin’, counterpoint-shouting, entertained-by-Coulter, worshipful of the druggie gasbag Limbaugh crowd.

    I still haven’t seen any information which leads me to think that incumbency, Rove’s campaign tactics, and Democratic gutlessness and inability to articulate what at least appears to be an effective program will return all the bastards to office.

  • People are lining up to side with their sources of information rather than the truthfulness of the information. I went to see ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ last week and was reprimanded by one of my inlaws that I needed to “consider the source”. The war of world views is at our doorstep.

  • I agree with what everyone has said but the poll was in the Washington Times. Has anyone questioned if the respondents were balanced or more heavily rebublican?

  • This poll must be flawed somewhere. In addition to the inconsistences rege pointed out above, I can’t see how Bush and the Iraq War support are so down in other national polls, yet belief in Bush’s rationale for going to war (one of the rationales I should say) has surged so much in this one. Of course, you can’t rule out inconsistencies in the logic of the people polled either–we have been “dumbed down”. Nor can you rule out the pollster playing with the wording either. I wish we had a neutral party to evaluate this because these “disconnects” pop up in polling quite frequently. Does Media Matters ever handle things like this?

  • The polls are unlikely to be flawed. This is not the discussion that should be following this post.

    Humans are primarily perceptive creatures not logical creatures. Cognitive science bears this out. We who embrace and are comfortable with logic and rationality frequently forget this, or fail to notice because it’s outside our ‘frame’. (Check out George Lakoff on this concept.)

    Progressives have modern philosophy and reasoning. Progressive religious leaders have modern theology.

    Right wing and neoconservative leaders have primitive philosophy and reasoning.
    Right wing religious leaders have primitve theology.

    The far right embraced modern cognitive science, modern communications theory and practice, and a results based strategy after Barry Goldwater’s catastrophic defeat. They had to.

    We would be well to notice the log in our eye before criticizing the mote in theirs. (It’s a big mote but they are continuing to succeed, and consistent in fullfilling the goals of Leo Strauss.)

    Also, I find it distressing to find on this site sentiments that Bush is stupid. Not only does the evident success of his administration bely that, but he recent historical record does as well. Google ‘Bush 16 years ago’. There he is, running for office in Texas, sounding like a policy wonk, no pauses, no grammatical errors. He lost, he learned.

    We continue to feel we are smarter than he is. Every time we make fun of him we are energizing his NASCAR Dad base who deeply resent intellectuals who are ‘smarter’, and who talk like W.

    Southern Democrats won for years while talking like Bubbas and loving them. We would do well to love the people of this country. Just because they’ve been deceived by the most integrated and collosal media empire ever assembled on earth does not mean that they are venal. Each has wisdom that is essential to the survival of all of humanity. It may not be ‘logical’ wisdom. It may not be intellectual rigor.

    It may be essential – as biology illuminates: Species with the greatest diversity survive the longest. We all need each other, because of our differences, not in spite of them. We so need to have conversations that are respectful, both in agreement and in disagreement. We need the synthesis of concepts that comes from a combination of differences. That is key to the survival of democracy, in fact it is the core of democracy. It is, as well, key to the survival of the great mass of humanity. Anyone who has doubt about this read Kevin Phillips book, American Theocracy and see An Inconvenient Truth. Or read any number of well researched publications. We’ve got trouble and pointing out the flaws of ‘those others’ will only address them in a reactionary manner.

    I ask that everyone who reads this through examine why they feel angry. The flip side of the things that make us most angry are the things that we miss most deeply. Mull over those and talk from that perspective.

    What I want is reality based respectful communion – as in ‘community’. Polarization will tear apart democracy and will only empower the soulless elite. We cannot end it by an easy pollyanna approach. We can all take ourselves away from the brink of the horror of true polarization – as Iraq is experiencing – by taking the hard steps to examine ourselves, and listen well to those with whom we differ.

    This does not mean that we should leap across all those with whom we differ a little to embrace those with whom we differ greatly. Productive outreach is not a leap across the chasm. It’s a hand extended as far as we are comfortable.

    It’s been working for me to carry me out of the deep depression I felt after the 2004 election. I’ve made connections that will be genuine supportive community by stepping beyond the comfort zone.

    We bring reason that is motivated by deeply heartfelt belief in a better way to be a people and a country. We bring reason that is essential. However, few have been brought to reason by logic alone. Many have been brought to reason by melting hearts.

  • Here is another oddity of the survey. Only 37% of Americans think that Iraq will develop a stable democracy(Table 1.), yet 63% think America will be credited with bring democracy to Iraq. How the hell can you reconcile that?

    That should have been: Here is another oddity of the survey. Only 37% of Americans think that Iraq will develop a stable democracy(Table 1.), yet 55% think America will be credited with bring democracy to Iraq. How the hell can you reconcile that?

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