50% think Saddam had WMD?

Via Kevin Drum, a new Harris poll suggests that misperceptions about Iraqi WMD have increased during the last year:

Despite being widely reported in the media that the U.S. and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, surprisingly; more U.S. adults (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq. This is an increase from 36 percent in February 2005.

The Washington Times suggests that the increase was driven by the (bogus) Hoekstra/Santorum claim that recovering degraded 1980s shells counts as finding WMD, which was widely hyped. It's possible. Any other ideas?

Comments

[PatF]

I do agree that many on the far right are overhyping the shells, but the simple facts are such that it's both inaccurate and a manipulative disservice to claim that "no WMDs were found". If you want to stop playing their game, then stop playing their game, period.

[James Bourke]

PatF--the question is whether there was ever any case for this war, and whether or not the American public believes so.

[Seth]

I would be interested in a revised poll on the second part of the original casus belli the supposed Iraqi/Al Qaeda operational ties.

I hate to sound cynical but is anyone really surprised the American people are terribly ininformed/misinformed? As they say: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

[Anodyne]

I’m skeptical of the idea that the Santorum/Hoekstra effort got much notice and was directly causal in this case. It would be helpful to know how this change breaks down by party affiliation, initial position on the war, preferred media sources, etc. In the meantime, perhaps you can come up with some data that would allow you to examine the intertemporal relation between the belief that Saddam possessed WMD and the belief that Iraq will become a stable democracy (or any number of questions that might get at the somewhat vague construct of a “satisfactory” outcome). If the percentage of people that accept the notion that the invasion of Iraq was mistake has been fairly sticky over period covered by the poll, I would expect these percentages to move inversely over time.

[Kandis Natoli]

This may be an example of confirmation bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

The important question is why they want to believe. Douglas Carmicheal has offered some intersting insights at http://www.dougcarmichael.com/reemergence.html