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Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD
lukin321
Charlotte, NC Posts: 864
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
34 minutes ago
Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.
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 (news, bio, voting record) and Michigan's Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), 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.
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.
--- That last bit about Fox's claim is pretty goddamn ridiculous if you ask me.
34 minutes ago
Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.
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 (news, bio, voting record) and Michigan's Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), 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.
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.
--- That last bit about Fox's claim is pretty goddamn ridiculous if you ask me.
9/1/98, 8/9/00, 8/12/00, 4/11/03, 4/12/03, 4/13/03, 4/19/03, 9/28/04, 9/29/04, 10/1/04, 10/2/04, 10/3/04, 10/8/04, 5/27/06, 5/28/06, 6/11/08, 6/12/08, 10/27/09, 10/28/09, 10/30/09, 10/31/09, 10/30/2013, 4/8/2016, 4/9/2016, 4/11/2016, 4/13/2016
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https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/
"While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol3_cw_key-findings.htm
It is very sick..
Yet our pathetic and happily misinformed countrymen are so fucking proud of themselves.
Par for the course.
High Traffic ART EZI FTJ JSR KPA PCD SYN ULX VLB YHF
Low Traffic CIO MIW
Non Traffic ABC BAY FDU GBZ HNC NDP OEM ROV TMS ZWL
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Why are europeans so thick as to believe this? No offense to clever Europeans, I dont want to alienate the two of you.
www.myspace.com/jensvad
Oh how I long to be an enlightened elitist just like you all one day.
- Dan
Thank goodness for you that you're the enlightened one who can see right through this government deception unlike the rest of us sheeples.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
And if I asked you for hard evidence of your claim, that they were lied about, you would naturally be able to provide this for me, right?
I mean, no one would actually accuse someone of something so heinous as that without being able to factually substantiate it, would they?
- Dan
there's the isg report, what david kay said after he stepped down, an iaea report that said they had no nuke program (bush claimed in a speech they were 6 months away from having a nuke)....would those be good enough for you?
oh, there's also a few cia analysts who complained about being pressured for intel that helped the push for war even when the intel wasn't verified or believed to be false...the fact that the cia contacted the white house, nsa and speech writers that some of the claims they were making were false (they later claimed these telephone calls and memos from the cia just 'slipped their minds' :rolleyes: )
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Ummm, no that isn't good enough for me at all. Are you kidding me??
Some guy saying something after he stepped down that contradicted a line in a speech? A few analysts "complaints"?
Sorry, try again.
- Dan
out of curiosity, why do you feel the ISG and IAEA reports are worthless?? the ISG team was organzied by the pentagon and cia!
george tenet didn't make those claims after he stepped down, he made them while he was still head of the cia
the administration made a bunch of claims that were later found to be false.
asked why they used the false claims bush said it was the cia's fault b/c they never told them they disagreed.
then it came out the cia sent a few memos over this as well as tenet making a phone call personally stating the agency did not agree w/ some of the statements they were making.
stephen hadley (who was under condi rice and now has her old job) claimed he DID receive the memos and phone call but they simply 'slipped his mind'
the first hit on a google search:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/24/iraq/main564877.shtml
(CBS/AP) A top White House national security adviser is taking the blame for allowing a tainted intelligence report suggesting Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa to find its way into President Bush's State of the Union address.
Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley said two CIA memos and a call from CIA Director George Tenet had persuaded him to take a similar passage out of a presidential speech in October — and that he should have done likewise when it turned up again in State of the Union drafts.
Bush aides said the president was upset by Hadley's failure to come forward with the CIA objections, but turned down what amounted to an offer by Hadley to resign. Mr. Bush "has full confidence" in his national security team, including Hadley and Tenet, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.
***note, he was so upset he promoted him!?!?!?!***
It came as the White House pressed a full-scale damage control effort in an attempt to divert attention away from Mr. Bush's State of the Union comments on Iraq and Africa, which the White House withdrew earlier this month because evidence backing them was found to have been forged.
It later emerged that Tenet had blocked the president from mentioning the charge, which related to Niger, in an October speech by Mr. Bush. The CIA had even tried to get Britain to omit the claim from a September report on weapons.
Then the White House said the statement was technically correct because it attributed the claim to the British. The administration subsequently tried to downplay the importance of the claim.
Hadley, in a rare hour-long, on-the-record session with reporters, said he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from Tenet raising objections to a section in a speech Bush was to give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7.
But he suggested the entire episode slipped his mind when Mr. Bush's State of the Union speech was being vetted.
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
are we honestly becoming utter consumers? blind....deaf......unaware?
how long will we let politicians convince us to kill other human beings? we are a bunch of pawns in their game...and its statistics like this one that makes these people just want to keep taking bigger bites of the cake.
this must help ease reservations they have about owning the voting machines. hell....locking up that next election when half of america still thinks there are WMA's will be like shooting fish in a barrel!
-Big Fish
Bushlager, you seem to forget a thread on the MT some time ago that dealt exclusively with this issue. In it, there were literally dozens of examples that showed officials in the Bush admninistration either lying about WMD in Iraq, or blatantly disregarding intel from numerous other sources from around the world. So I went digging, and lo and behold, I found the old archived thread - with all of the examples therein pertaining to WMD and the Bush administration. The links are there but don't function b/c its old archive - however, you can cut and paste and get to the articles that way if you are so desirous. In many cases you don't have to b/c I actually culled some of the best segments and posted them in the various posts. For the sake of brevity, just read my posts (ie; Truthmonger). Happy reading !!!
http://forums.pearljam.com/archive/index.php/t-152288.html
I do not consider those reports worthless, I just don't make the same connection you do. They are not a smoking gun for me, certaintly not to the extent that I'm going to call the sitting President a liar in a time of war.
I don't necessarily think you're wrong, mind you. I'm just saying I don't know, and that I have yet to be convinced that it's to the point that we can just write this guy off as a liar/murderer/war profiteer/etc. like the far left does.
It's just irresponsible to me, and part of the politics of personal destruction that accomplishes nothing. The left gains absolutely nothing by trying to run the President's name through the mud. So much energy wasted.
If the energy of smart people like you, and smarter people in D.C. were focused on more constructive matters, you'd really be able to make this guy look like a fool. Instead you come off looking like extremists, hell bent on discrediting every word the man has ever said.
Just look at this thread. Because half the country is still unsure as to what Saddam had and what he didn't, people call them ignorant, blind, dumb, and worse. If the left is so certain, and so right on point, and they know exactly what went down and how, maybe they are the dumb, ignorant and blind one's, because they sure as hell are doing a crappy job getting their message across.
- Dan
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=152288
only in this current story...those chanting "I believe, I believe" are waiting for Santa to bring real proof saddam had WMD's....
I read through most of the article. It's a pretty good presentation, I have to say. I guess I just have a really hard time bringing the hammer down on someone unless I am 100% certain. The article clearly states that it doesn't think the Pesident and his team were "conciously lying" to get their way, just that when looking back on the pre-war intelligence they may have aggressively done some selective fact-finding.
This doesn't mean they are right, mind you. It's one side of the coin. I don't think I can make the extreme statements that the far left makes, based on these claims. They go too far, IMO.
- Dan
the other foot in the gutter
sweet smell that they adore
I think I'd rather smother
-The Replacements-
You say that you read "the article" (singular form). But the thread I posted deals with NUMEROUS articles, many of which go much further than the innocuous summation of the one to which you refer. What's stunning here is not only the charges being dropped by these people, but the sheer number of individuals who have come forward and made such claims about the Bush administrations' level of honesty, or lack thereof. The fact of the matter, is that at the very least, there was a mountain of evidence contradicting Bush's claims that was either conveniently ignored or purposely undermined. A number of people, most or all of whom seem to be very intelligent, reasonable, informed and reputable, go much further. And these people are not all from the left politically.
it was actually more like 48.3% that thought kerry would win, but i'll accept you rounding up to 50%
Well, I couldn't read them all right now, sorry. I read the main one.
For what you claim to be a "mountain" of evidence ignored, there are 10 mountains of legitimate truths to the reasons given for war. Bush & Co. gave the people, the UN, its allies, the world, etc. a million and one reasons why they had WMD's. Are they all lies??
So why haven't we seen impeachment proceedings? Clinton was impeached because he lied to the country. If what you and all these other smart people from both sides of the aisle say is true, why is Bush remaining unscathed? It can't be because the GOP has both houses, because plenty of right wing people think Bush is a liar and a murderer too, right?
Okay, maybe you will say it is because of party interests, and that is why. But what are you going to tell me after November? If the Dem's are controlling at least one house of Congress, will we see it then?
I personally don't think so. And if they dare to try, I will bet you they fall on their faces.
- Dan
Just say uncle and resume your life...you don't win them all.
He should be impeached....and a few members of his administration should be sent to Jail (not georgy though....he meant to do the right thing) ....unfortunately..right now Rep. control the House and Senate...and 1/2 the Americans will/and have been told that if you go against the President....then your against the troops and therefore unpatriotic.
I always knew history would prove to those that voted for Bush twice that they made a huge freakin mistake....I just couldn't beleive it would be while the douche is still in Office...this is such a sweet time for some of us. I do also relize in defense of those that did vote for him...the Dems didn't offer much more. But though a little. (-:
Peace
Callen
What I really want to see is a pole of how many people belive Saddam was involved in 9-11. I bet it's at least 40%.