{"id":497,"date":"2007-08-03T18:20:28","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T18:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/unaware-citizens.html"},"modified":"2007-08-03T18:20:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T18:20:28","slug":"unaware-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/unaware-citizens.html","title":{"rendered":"Unaware citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Jillian for the link to this article<\/a> about 50% of Americans thinking we found WMDs in Iraq. The article is a year old but is still a jaw-dropper – a much more powerful example of how little we Americans tend to know about little things like…war.<\/p>\n

Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
\nHalf 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.
\nPeople tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.
\nThe 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.
\nDespite 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.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Jillian for the link to this article about 50% of Americans thinking we found WMDs in Iraq. The article is a year old but is still a jaw-dropper – a much more powerful example of how little we Americans tend to know about little things like…war. Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-popular-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nUnaware citizens - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2007\/08\/unaware-citizens.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unaware citizens - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thanks to Jillian for the link to this article about 50% of Americans thinking we found WMDs in Iraq. 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