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)
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)