Published on Monday, August 7, 2006 by the Associated Press
Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD
by Charles J. Hanley
-- 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.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0807-05.htmThis appears a direct result of Santorum's recent lies on WMDs being found. People hear the lie put out, but they don't hear about it when the lie is rebutted. The Republicans know this very well. There are a large number of Americans who will believe anything they hear on the news, and for the media to allow Santorum to go on there and tell his lies without raising hell shows an absolute lack of journalism.
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