Unbelievable

Ever wonder who answers those Nigerian phishing scams?

Here's a possible subset of the population. From today's AP story:

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.

Yes, after all this time, half the population tells pollsters that Iraq had WMD!

I've previously mentioned one explanation for this mistaken belief. Some members of Congress keep emphasizing the meaningless chemical shells found in the past few years:

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.

If the US went to war against every weak chemically-armed state, it would need to prepare for 50 wars.

Some other "experts," without any real evidence, claim that Iraq's missing WMD ended up in Syria.

At least this AP reporter, Charles Hanley, is willing to call the President out on his role in continuing the mass misperception:

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.

Liar.


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Filed as: Iraq