Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD

Fox News Asks "ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH'S HANDS?"

 

CHARLES J. HANLEY / AP | August 6 2006

 

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 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.

 

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.

i think its very likely saddam got rid of his wmd's before the war, it wouldnt be hard at all.

Ermm.....what? To shift all the stuff that they were said to have had would have been SO difficult.

 

The inspectors even said that they don't think that anything was there for years and years....

i know, but it wouldnt surprise me at all if he did have them. he had all the materials to make them, the scientist to do it, and you know he had no moral issues with making or having them, so a powerful weapon like that why would he have it? it helped keep him in power when iraqi's tried to overthrow him.

Yeah, he was a currupt, mass murdering bastard and he enjoyed it.

 

But when Colin Powel did his famous presentation on Saddams Weapons of MAss Destruction - it's looks certain that they weren't even there then.

 

However, as you say, he had the scientists that had worked for him in the past.....but even the Bush Administration has just about admitted that they weren't there.....

 

I too wouldn't be suprised if someone like Saddam had such weapons - but it's just he didn't.

So how many people did they ask to get this "50% of all americans..." crap?

 

2?

3?

4?

"This Harris Poll® was conducted by telephone within the United States between July 5 and 11, 2006 among 1,020 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, number of adults in the household, number of phone lines in the household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population."

 

Poll List

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PollYear=2006

He used them against Kurds and Iranians, and mustard gas was detected in battle zones during Gulf War I.

 

He didn't seem to obey the U.N. in any fashion, so what makes you assume he would follow orders to destroy his WMD.

 

A MiG-25 Foxbat fighter jet was found buried by Saddam after the war in 2003, (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/f/foxbat.htm), so what makes you think that he couldn't hide a series of viles containing smallpox, VX, or Sarin?

 

It's encouraging to discover that half of the country still has its head on straight and does not let the far-left media tell them what is true and what is false.

Oh dear, He's a Evil man but it's not there.....and we were told it was.

He didn't seem to obey the U.N. in any fashion' date=' so what makes you assume he would follow orders to destroy his WMD. [/quote']

 

Ha, the US doesn't either, so what's the point of saying this?

Right on.

like i said he had them before, had all the materials to make them, and the scientist, so why wouldnt he have had them? there was no reason not too, specialy since they saved him in the past. so many americans know this, so why wouldnt they think he had wmd's?

Well, exactly....the public was told all of what you just said over and over again in the run up the the "War". That's why so many Americans know this, not because they actually studied what was going on.....but because the Government drummed it into their lives......

 

They still weren't there in 2003 though.

I love how you assume that Americans are automatons with no ability to do research for themselves. You make so many false generalities about Americans that I just can't help but laugh.

 

Yes, half of America believes every soundbite that the government releases, and the other half believes absolutely nothing that the government says. You've hit it right on the head. No one does any research to develop their own opinions. America is unique in this way.

Hey, I know it's not the case with everyone.....But I know a large number of people don't even know where Iraq is on the map so...

 

AND that's not everyone....

 

Alot of people obviously DO get their news from mainstream soundbytes as otherwise they would know better.

Hey, I know it's not the case with everyone.....But I know a large number of people don't even know where Iraq is on the map so...

 

AND that's not everyone....

 

Alot of people obviously DO get their news from mainstream soundbytes as otherwise they would know better.

 

sorry not everyone reads conspiracy theory sites for their news. those are way worse then mainstream media.

Whatever, think what you want. What will it take for you to realise that it's all news that is more researched the mainstream news. You obviously can't handle the thought that everybody is being lied to about everything, which is fine, but don't think that everyone feels like you because they don't and more people are realising it every day....you really should get over your fear and really read up on the thing I post as you will find a whole wealth of knowledge.