WASHINGTON – A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll, and 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.
But no such weapons have been found, nor is there evidence they were used recently in Iraq.
Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. But most of them were from Saudi Arabia. None were Iraqis.
How could so many people be so wrong about information that has dominated the news for nearly two years?
The poll results startled the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the surveys.
“It’s a striking finding,” said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,265 respondents.
“Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention,” he said, “this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance.”
That is, having their beliefs conflict with the facts.
2 comments on “Misinformation”
That’s really interesting…I like reading papers from different countries, you’ll get plenty different versions of one story that way, especially regarding US politics…
Yeah, I always try to read as many different news sources as I can. It’s really interesting to me to see how noticably biased American (and to a large extent Canadian) media seem to be.