Of WMDs, an IED and the Tooth Fairy

Half of adult Americans still believe Sadam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in 2003, according to an Associated Press story that's making the rounds in today's papers. Not reported was how many adult Americans believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or all the different reasons, whatever they may be, advanced for the latest spikes in crude oil prices on world futures markets.

Said The AP's Charles J. Hanley, reporting on a public opinion poll taken last month:

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.

Hardly surprising. Consider well more than half of adult Americans believed, equally erroneously, Hussein was somehow linked to the 9-11 terrorist strikes in America.

Hanley's lede is a classic feature treatment. He begins:

Do you believe in Iraqi WMD?

Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of Americans apparently still think 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 ...

Nice lede. It sums up the information, and it establishes a light tone that I think is appropriate for the subject matter. The often reported facts are as Hanley states them, and the reality is the Bush administration's claim of WMDs in Iraq was used as a pretext for invasion.

What's more interesting than the AP story, which I read on The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website, was the array of opinions posted to the PI's "SoundOff" forum on the story. The first was posted by "Swiftsure" at 4 p.m. yesterday:

It just goes to show that people are easily deluded by propaganda against all evidence to the contrary.

The next, posted three minutes later by "High Desert Coug," took an opposite point of view:

He DID have WMD. This poll only shows that 50% of the people don't understand the news.

Remember when the insurgents used that VX shell as an IED?

Oops...VX is a WMD. You know, the WMD's that Saddam supposedly destroyed.

The 100% truth is that he had WMD's. He said he destroyed them all, and he didn't.

It's undisputed. The fact that 50% of the public DOESN'T believe it is to the credit of the liberal smear machine.

I'd forgotten about the VX shell, if I was ever aware of it, but a web search turned up a May 2004 story in Chemical & Engineering News, an organ of the American Chemical Society, about a leftover artillery shell used in an improvised explosive device that contained sarin, a nerve agent similar to VX. It was thought to date from before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

At exactly the same time as "High Desert Coug" mentioned the old artillery shell, at 4:03 p.m., "theedge98074" weighed in with a blast at the mainstream media:

this is just another excuse to encite more anti-Bush retroic from everyone. Why don't you write what you want to write: "There are idiots out there who still believe that there were WMD's". Getting tired of this crap, we all know where you stand and you do not need to keep pressing it into our heads. And, in doing so, you are basically called people who do not agree with your view stupid.

I'd like to say the tone of debate in the PI's forum got more civil from there.

But it didn't.

Typical, perhaps, of one side was "Chantel," who posted at 4:20 p.m.:

Poor Coug. A shell, child, is not a WMD. See, it would have to have a rocket or some means of propulsion, plus the ability to affect a wide area (that's the meaning of "mass" in the phrase 'weapons of mass destruction') in order to qualify as a WMD.

Still, son, if it helps you - just keep believing. There is a Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy loves you, and there were WMD in Iraq. Believe, child, believe!

And so on in that vein, on both sides, through the night. Here's part of the thread posted in the wee hours:

Posted by vette_demon at 8/7/06 4:22 a.m.

I can't believe how hateful and arrogant you people are...it's sad.

Posted by Sirrider at 8/7/06 5:37 a.m.

I have to agree with vette_demon--you folks are generating a lot of heat, but very little light.

And that, I'd say, pretty well sums up the whole thread.