There's a new Harris poll out, and it's informative, in a way. They surveyed almost 2000 American adults during the second week of December, and asked them various questions about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, 9/11, and so on, and well... the results
are pretty damned depressing. Click the link to see the tables and methodology and such; I'm just quoting the intro here.
Sizeable minorities of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had "strong links to al Qaeda," a Harris Interactive poll shows, though the number has fallen substantially this year.
About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults.
However, all of these beliefs have declined since February of this year, when 64% of those polled believed Mr. Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda and 46% said Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11. At that time, more than a third said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and 44% said several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.
Currently, 56% of adults believe Iraqis are better off now than they were under Mr. Hussein, down from 76% in February. Nearly half of those polled say they believe Iraq, under Mr. Hussein, was a threat to U.S. security, down from 61% in February.
The whole news page is kind of maddening, since it never actually states objective reality. They say, "still believe" several times, while never actually pointing out that all of those beliefs are Santa Clausesque! I mean okay, it's probably painfully obvious to the reporter, and if I were presenting poll results in which 27% of the people responding were unaware that the sky was blue and grass was green, I might not actually take the time to point out that they were on fucking crack... but when you've got substantial minorities who believe in nonsense, shouldn't you at least make some effort to educate them when you present the summation of their ignorance?
The last couple of questions are opinion-based and open to debate, but how about the first few?
This sort of thing probably goes some distance towards explaining why Bush still has even a 36% (or whatever the current figure is) job approval rating. I do wonder about these people, though. Are they like non-celebrity versions of Paris Hilton; all caught up in their own little worlds of clothing and parties and such, with no knowledge of current events beyond what they picked up through the crudest sort of "TV news on at a friend's house" osmosis? Or are they hardcore right wing FOX News/Rush Limbaugh types who love Bush and who choose to disbelief all the media reports that don't conform to their chosen view of the world?
