-Bianca-

WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (IPS) - Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W Bush still believe pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programmes to produce them, and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein gave "substantial support" to al-Qaeda terrorists, according to a survey released Thursday.

Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicised official government reports that debunked both notions.

Those are among the most striking findings of the survey, which was conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey, which polled the views of nearly 900 randomly chosen respondents equally divided between Bush supporters and those intending to vote for Democratic Senator John Kerry in November's presidential election, found a yawning gap in the world views, particularly as regards pre-war Iraq, between the two groups.

"It is normal during elections for supporters of presidential candidates to have fundamental disagreements about values or strategies," said an analysis produced by PIPA.

But "the current election is unique in that Bush supporters and Kerry supporters have profoundly different perceptions of reality. In the face of a stream of high-level assessments about pre-war Iraq, Bush supporters cling to the refuted beliefs that Iraq had WMD or supported al-Qaeda."

Indeed, the only issue on which the survey found broad agreement between the two sets of voters was on the question of whether the administration itself actively propagated the misconceptions about Iraq's WMD and connections to al-Qaeda.

"One of the reasons that Bush supporters have these (erroneous) beliefs is that they perceive the Bush administration confirming them," noted PIPA Director Steven Kull. "Interestingly, this is one point on which Bush and Kerry supporters agree."

The survey also found a major gap between Bush's stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe that position to be. A strong majority of Bush backers believe, for example, that the president supports a range of global treaties and institutions, which he is actually on record as opposing.

On pre-war Iraq, the survey asked each respondent questions about WMD and links to al-Qaeda on three levels: 1) what the respondents themselves believed about the two issues; 2) what they believed "most experts" had concluded about them; and 3) what they believed the Bush administration was saying about them.

The survey found 72 percent of Bush supporters believe either that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a major programme for making them (25 percent), despite the widespread media coverage in early October of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA's) 'Duelfer Report', the final word on the subject by the one-billion-dollar, 15-month investigation by the Iraq Survey Group.

It concluded Hussein had dismantled all of his WMD programmes shortly after the 1991 Gulf War and had never tried to reconstitute them.

Nonetheless, 56 percent of Bush supporters said they thought most experts currently believe Iraq had actual WMD, and 57 percent said they thought the Duelfer Report had concluded that Iraq either had WMD (19 percent) or a major WMD programme (38 percent).

Only 26 percent of Kerry supporters, by contrast, said they believed that pre-war Iraq had either actual WMD or a WMD programme, and only 18 percent said they believed "most experts" agreed with those two possibilities.

Similar results were found with respect to Hussein's alleged support for al-Qaeda, a theory that has been most persistently asserted by Vice President Dick Cheney, but that was thoroughly debunked by the final report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission earlier this summer.

Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters said they believed Iraq was providing "substantial" support to al-Qaeda, with 20 percent asserting Baghdad was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Sixty-three percent of Bush supporters even believed that clear evidence of such support has been found, and 60 percent believed "most experts" have reached the same conclusion.

By contrast, only 30 percent of Kerry supporters said they believe such a link existed and that most experts agree.

But large majorities of both Bush and Kerry supporters agree that the administration is saying Iraq had WMD and was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda. In regard to WMD, those majorities have actually grown since last summer, according to PIPA.

Remarkably, asked whether the United States should have gone to war with Iraq if U.S. intelligence had concluded Baghdad did not have a WMD programme and was not supporting al-Qaeda, 58 percent of Bush supporters said no, and 61 percent said they assumed the president would also not have gone to war under those circumstances.

"To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions," said Kull, "likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq."

Kull added that this "cognitive dissonance" could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey, particularly with respect to Bush supporters' misperceptions about the president's own positions.

In particular, majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent).

In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favoured the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to the president.

Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate's and Bush's positions on the same issues.

Bush supporters were also found to hold misperceptions regarding international support for the president and his policies.

Despite a steady flow over the past year of official statements by foreign governments and public-opinion polls showing strong opposition to the Iraq war, less than one-third of Bush supporters believed that most people in foreign countries opposed Washington having gone to war.

Two-thirds said they believed foreign views were either evenly divided on the war (42 percent) or that the majority of foreigners actually favoured the war (26 percent).

Three of every four Kerry supporters, on the other hand, said they understood that most of the rest of the world opposed the war.

Kull, who has been analysing U.S. public opinion on foreign-policy issues for two decades, said misperceptions of Bush supporters showed, if anything, the hold the president has over his loyalists.

"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally into the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake," he said.

"This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters -- and an idealised image of the president that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgements before the war, that world public opinion would be critical of his policies or that the president could hold foreign-policy positions that are at odds with his supporters." (END/2004)

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25967

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It's one thing to truly support Bush and what he stands for while realizing his faults and the truth, but the mindless sheep mentality of so many folks who are going to vote in a crucial presidential election this year scares the living **** out of me.

I forgot the 'of' in my title. Dammit.

alli balli

It is very scary, I agree. But not particularly surprising. People will believe what they want to believe, whether or not the facts back it up.

86amanda86

I find it interesting too. That to the democrats, the interpretation of "facts" means that Bush lied and we went to war on false pretenses and to the republicans, the interpretation of "facts" means that Bush didn't lie, there were WPMs that we gave Saddam to much time to get rid of. Very interesting indeed.

*Ledi*

Yeah and what the Republicans need to know is that Saddam NEVER had any WMD's.. and that he's NOT had ANY since 1991.

So your administration did lie indeed.

86amanda86

And where is that proof ledi? Where are the facts that back that up?

*Ledi*

thought this one was obvious?


Look my answer above.

86amanda86

The statement "he's NOT had ANY since 1991," is not proof, it's just speculation.

*Ledi*

Okay... I really think you gotta start reading the news a bit more.


Here.. to enlighten you: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/i...0-06-wmd_x.htm

Milt Palacio

Like alli balli said, if you want to support a candidate bad enough, you will believe what you want to believe.

Americans as a whole are very uninformed about the issues.

86amanda86

See, we give Bush the benefit of the doubt and you give Saddam the benifit of the doubt. How could some inspection group say there were no weapons and expect that to be credible after the fact? Of course if they go in now it's very easy to say there were no WMDs. Like he'd leave the evidence and documents just lying around...

JohannafromIHJ

Dear, sweet, innocent Amanda, stop and think for two seconds. For one, people are not giving Saddam the benefit of the doubt. But when the world's leading experts and the CIA declare that there are no VMDs in Iraq, people do "give them the benefit of the doubt". People with connections all over the world, people with insight and incredible info-access to every regime you can imagine, have all come to the conclusion that there were no VMDs.

They spent one billion on investigating whether there were WMDs in Iraq. They found that there weren't any, nor did any of the people they question say there were any - and this is despite the fact that people who revealed where the WMDs were would have been given so much money it would have made you sick. They did not find any place where VMDs could have been created, hidden, stocked or whatever. No country has stepped up to say that they are storing WMDs (and why the hell would Saddam need to smuggle them out of the country anyway? So that he'll only be executed once after the trial is over?)

No Iraqis have mentioned anything about even knowing about VMDs, making them or any plans to smuggle them out of the country. The chances that VMDs could have been smuggled out of the country are slim, at best (you'd think Saddam would have smuggled himself out in the process, eh?).

Those are facts, Amanda. Unless you're calling the CIA liars, or idiots.

See?

Saddam wanted the weapons, yes - but to control the Middle East. He didn't care about the USA, he wanted unarmed enemies. And fact is, in the many years it would have taken for Saddam to build his desired bombs, his people would most likely have risen against him.

Pretty much every expert in the world agrees: there were no WMDs. Even if there had been weapons they would have been of no threat to the US, since Saddam hates Bin Laden and didn't care about the USA.

Your government was either wrong, or it has been lying to you all along. Either way, the question now is: Why won't they admit to their mistake?

86amanda86

ok, for now i'll concede that point. but how does that mean that bush lied?
He was going on the inteligence given to him then too. If anything, he was misinformed, because all CIA inteligence then pointed to there being WMD.

JohannafromIHJ

The thing is though, if he didn't lie, then he was wrong - but he hasn't gone out and admitted that, has he? He hasn't apologised for sending thousands of troops to a war based on bad info, nor has he apologised to the allies he alienated, the iraqis this war killed or for the turmoil he created.

*Ledi*

I think -someone- actually was just a proof of how Bush supporters don't actually really know all that much.

I'm not talking about EVERYONE by the way.

86amanda86

first of all i don't think he has anything to apologize for. even if there were no WMD I'm still glad we went. WE got rid of a communist regime and we are now turning it over to the hands of the iraqi people.

secondly, why should he apologize when it wasn't his mistake? how many times do we have to say it? it wasn't like he woke up one morning and thought "oh, I think I'll invade iraq today." He had information in front of him that said he needed to go and I believe any president that had the information he had would have gone. Why else would congress have voted to go to war? And you can't tell me he lied to them, because they saw the same information he did and made the same decison he made...He didn't do anything wrong by sending our troops. I would be willing to fight and die to spread freedom.