Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD

[Ron Burgundy]

Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD (AP)

AP - Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did
Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
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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.

[Kytro]

Another example of the nowhere man syndrome - people see just want they want see.

[Scrum]

Newsflash!!! Half of all Americans are idiots.

[DosEquis]

its just unbelievable

[motivez]

I can't seriously believe this. After all this time, who still honestly thinks that he had WMD? And why?

Surely they called a disproportionate number of stupid people when they did this poll..

[kinggovernor]

what a biased article

[Kytro]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

what a biased article

Exhibit A

[Nonphixion]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

what a biased article

The Associated Press?

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by Kytro

Exhibit A

People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

.

[Diesel66]

I love how Ritter changes his view overnight. He attacked Clinton constantly for not forcing Iraq to comply with the cease fire but then attacked Bush for forcing Iraq to comply.



Kay's report

We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:

· A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.

· A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.

· Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.

· New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.

· Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).

· A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.

· Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.

· Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km -- well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.

· Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.

In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts to erase evidence -- hard drives destroyed, specific files burned, equipment cleaned of all traces of use -- are ones of deliberate, rather than random, acts.

CNN.com - Text of David Kay's unclassified statement - Oct. 2, 2003

[motivez]

In the "reality based community" as the neocons like to call it, when facts change or new information emerges, it's perfectly acceptable to change ones opinion of the current situation.

I understand that seems to be a foreign concept to these people who run our foreign policy, preferring to brand it a 'flip flop' and what not, but generally I think it's accepted that once you learn new things, it's a good idea to change your position with them.

I mean, we used to think we stayed on the ground because our sins weighed so much. Now we know about gravity (or intelligent falling if you'd prefer) and it's reasonable that we no longer believe the heaviness of our sins weighs us down.

[ballz2wallz]

i still think they had them

it's hard not to think so given the historical use of them and their refusal to get rid of them

[Scrum]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

i still think they had them

it's hard not to think so given the historical use of them and their refusal to get rid of them

Yet the fact that we didn't find any doesn't change your mind.

[motivez]

Originally Posted by Scrumtralecent

Yet the fact that we didn't find any doesn't change your mind.

That's what's so disturbing. We haven't found any. The Administration admits they were wrong. There's a huge scandal about the intelligence failure and the inaccuracies, and yet people refuse to believe all that?

I mean, why? I understand a need to feel like the Iraqi invasion was justified and in self defense, but it seems a little crazy to go against reality and admissions by the people who took us to war to the contrary.

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by Scrumtralecent

Yet the fact that we didn't find any doesn't change your mind.

there are too many ways to explain the fact that we didn't find them.

here are your options:

1) saddam was a good guy and followed the rules

2) saddam did something he shouldn't have and hid them somehow

which do you think it was?

[motivez]

Yeah, because he has to be a "good guy" to follow the rules? False choices there, I'm afraid.

Bottom line is there's no credible empirical gevidence to support any claim that he might have hid them, or moved them, etc..

[Scrum]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

there are too many ways to explain the fact that we didn't find them.

here are your options:

1) saddam was a good guy and followed the rules

2) saddam did something he shouldn't have and hid them somehow

which do you think it was?

Nice choices.


There were no WMD in Iraq. You guys really need to get past this, it's just silly at this point.
The administration and intelligence community have come out and said they were wrong. Why can't you say they were wrong?

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by Scrumtralecent

Nice choices.


There were no WMD in Iraq. You guys really need to get past this, it's just silly at this point.
The administration and intelligence community have come out and said they were wrong. Why can't you say they were wrong?

they have political motivations behind their admissions/decisions.

i don't, and i still believe saddam had them.

[avsp]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

they have political motivations behind their admissions/decisions.

i don't, and i still believe saddam had them.

Based on your distrust of him & his past history

Which is pretty much what the intell services said, .., except they added "but we're not certain coz we've got very little hard evidence"

One might as well ban you from LL coz you've an extensive history as a troll & almost certainly plan to do it again.

The stupidity is that Saddam was in breach of various UN resolutions (not least was unable to provide documentation for the total destruction of all his WMD stockpiles, & the 'too great a range missiles' etc), & was still using brUtality & terror to rule

Basically seeing how the admin (or elememts of it) were prepared (wanted to?) to act without UN approval the whole WMD thing was silly anyway, ..., the call should have been for direct regime change based on the fact that Saddam was a c*nt, .., this would have avoided all this crap &, uncertainty.

Further it would have served to reinforce the impression of US resolve & also been more honest. The overall damage to US credibility would have been less.