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View Full Version : Despite Misleading Polls, American Coming Around



Nbadan
09-10-2004, 05:40 PM
Did the administration feed a public misconception linking Saddam to 911 and continue to do so even today?


The authors, Scott Althaus, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Devon Largio, a law student at Vanderbilt University, say that the high levels of "public misperception" about Saddam's culpability are attributable to two things: the public's predisposition to believing Saddam was the culprit, and the wording and format of polling questions-which "artificially inflated" the misperception that Saddam was behind 9/11.

The authors examined every publicly available survey question asking Americans whether Hussein might be responsible for the attacks, concluding that this "mistaken belief was already widespread among Americans long before President Bush began publicly linking Saddam Hussein with the war on terror." They also found that the number of Americans blaming Saddam "has been dropping ever since the first days following 9/11."

The authors show that the wording of opinion surveys exaggerated the extent of these misperceptions. The earliest surveys indicate that Americans spontaneously mentioned Osama bin Laden as the main person responsible for the attacks. Other questions asked only about Saddam, forcing "survey respondents to pick an option. In response to those questions, as many as eight in 10 Americans appeared willing to believe Saddam could have had a hand in the terror attacks." ..

U.S. Newswire (http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=36031)

Yonivore
09-10-2004, 05:47 PM
So, of course they provided the numbers for today, right? I mean they showed how much the numbers have dropped, didn't they?

No?

Oh, okay.

Nbadan
09-10-2004, 05:56 PM
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/graphics/bush_presidency_for_dummies.jpg

Tommy Duncan
09-10-2004, 06:07 PM
The administration publicly linked removing Hussein to the war on terror as a preventative measure, not a punitive one.

Yonivore
09-10-2004, 06:07 PM
I'm going to take that non-sequitur as a "no, they didn't support their hypothesis."

Nbadan
09-10-2004, 06:24 PM
Even Texans, the traditional staunchest supporters of W's policies, are turning increasingly against the war.

Aggie Hoopsfan
09-10-2004, 06:31 PM
Who says Dan? Just because you and your buddies are pissed doesn't make it so.

As for Saddam, Bush never pretended to link him to 9/11 as the reason for going to war, it was a matter of preemption, taking down a foe before they could become an imminent threat.

That stupid people such as yourself can't grasp that and think Iraq is somehow a punitive reaction to 9/11 is not my problem.

Nbadan
09-10-2004, 06:34 PM
Why is the administration hiding the war dead?

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/casket08.jpg

Aggie Hoopsfan
09-10-2004, 06:37 PM
Who says they are hiding it?

It's the lead on the nightly news every night.

If you're bitching about the coffin photos, well you can think a former Democratic president for that one.

I guess everything's Bush's fault though, even things that democratic presidents decided thirty years ago.:rolleyes

Yonivore
09-10-2004, 06:39 PM
Wasn't that a picture from something other than the Iraq war? What was the whole mess over those published photos, I can't remember.