Polls Influenced Public Misperception of Saddam 9/11 Link

[Nambe]

U.S. Newswire

.. 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." ..

Ride Don’t Drive * * It’s Global Cool

[Barrett808]

1. Interesting: Self-correcting public not duped

"It appears that rather than becoming duped, as the popular account has it, the American public has gradually grown more critical of the idea that Hussein had a hand in 9/11," the researchers wrote. "Rather than showing a gullible public blindly accepting the rationales offered by an administration bent on war, our analysis reveals a self-correcting public that has grown ever more doubtful of Hussein's culpability since the 9/11 attacks."

[msturgis524]

4. Slight improvements I hope

At least I haven't seen a I'd fly 1000 miles to smoke a Camel T shirt lately.

[msturgis524]

2. Alot of people assumed it was Saddam that day

Many people I talked to on 9/11 assumed Iraq was behind it. Even after the evidence started emerging. The sad thing is the administration has learned slower than the rest of the country.

[arcane1]

3. hell they were doing that after Oklahoma City, too!

it's amazing how a Bush-created boogeyman can stick in the public's mind. And of course, the general public can't differentiate between which Bush-created boogeyman is which. They all look alike, non-Christian, live in those sad-filled countries

we are a nation of ignorant fools

[Dhalgren]

5. You, know, I never once head anyone suggest that

Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks. Only after Bush and Co. started their switch and bait routine did I hear anyone mention Saddam. With the "axis of evil" bullshit hitting the air 24/7, why didn't anyone jump to the conclusion that it was Iran, or Libya, or North Korea. And with the Saudi Arabian passports lying, intact, on the burning rubble of the WTO, why was Iraq ever thought of and not SA. This is bullshit, appology-research. I do not buy it. The polls made people think that Saddm was behind it? Right....

[msturgis524]

6. Iraq was the popular enemy

I was in a business meeting with about 12 educated people at the time. Everyone of them thought it was Iraq. Since the first gulf war it had become really popular to blame Iraq. Not even one of them knew much about Al Qaeda was or who Bin Laden was. Yes they had heard of the U.S.S Cole and Khobar towers etc. No one jumped to other conclusions because we hadn't been lobbing cruise missiles at Iran, or Libya, or North Korea for the better part of a decade. Further more the right wing media told them when Clinton did go after Al Qaeda he was wagging the dog. 9/11 started a new era in war, one many were not prepared to understand. The idea of a virtual enemy not sponsored by a state was very foreign. IMHO the idea existed that Saddam was behind 9/11. They just stuck with it in-spite of the evidence, because many Americans never wanted the truth. I think they assumed once they got rid of Saddam no-one would care what the truth was.

[Dhalgren]

7. I was on the construction site of a new library, at the

university where I work on the morning of 9/11. I was in a cross section of blue collar and very educated academics. No one mentioned Iraq, probably because no one figured Iraq was capable - they couldn't take a leak with the US firing missles at them. Also the last series of "terror" attacks had been by Al Q and OBL - we had heard of them and him. I had never thought of our little university being very "ahead" of anyone, but I guess in this case we were.

[demoman123]

11. How come I never thought it was Iraq?

None of my friends did either, right from the beginning. Within days we knew about Osama and knew there was no connection with Saddam.

I guess it's because we were all against the Gulf War and knew that Saddam was just a bogeyman.

[leesa]

12. Why did you think it was OBL? Same difference. They lied to you about

that one too. There has been no proof of OBLs involvement with 9-11 yet within minutes the Bush Crime Family fingered OBL and America swallowed it.

The fake tape where he allegedly admitted doing it is a guy that looks nothing like OBL. And Americans swallowed it.

[demoman123]

16. Bush is just a front for extraterrestrial shapeshifting reptilians.

Click here for the real truth.

[Dhalgren]

17. I thought about OBL and AL Q because Clinton's admin had

been fighting against them since the early '90s. But, (if you can believe any of the "evidence") I have generally viewed the 9/11 attacks as being essentially Saudi Arabian backed. If 19 "terrorists" had attacked a major city in China and it turned out that 90% of the perps were US citizens, I think that the Chinese would consider the attack to have come from Americans. Almost all of the "terrorists" were Saudi, OBL is Saudi, and it has been established that most of AL Q's funding is Saudi. So "it must has been Saddam"?

I simply reject the idea that "Americans" didn't know about AL Q, didn't know who OBL was, or who the Taliban were following or prior to, the 9/11 attacks. There are citizens who don't know where Mexico is, but I don't think you can say that "Americans" don't know where Mexico is.

[msturgis524]

13. Because you pay attention to the news

I never thought it was Saddam either. September 10th your average American couldn't tell you who OBL was, who the Taliban was, or even where Afghanistan was. Yes most of America learned that it was Al Qaeda quickly. I do remember though watching Mullah Omar on CNN saying it wasn't us it wasn't us, a few hours after the fact and no-one around me knew who he was. With shrub ignoring Afghanistan, OBL, and Al Qaeda why would the average Joe have any clue. Our elected leaders told us over and over what a threat Saddam was and never mentioned the real threat. People buy into the myth because they want to believe the world hasn't changed, that we aren't vulnerable to a small group of people acting by themselves.

[leftchick]

15. Interesting. I thought of Al-Q ....

or some other extremist terrorist network. Saddam was a lot of things but he was not a threat to anyone outside of Iraq. Most "educated people" knew that.

[Jacobin]

14. I didn't either

Osama popped into my head when the FIRST plane hit.

I was aghast when SmirkCo began its vapid and lame attempts to intertwine the two to justify stealing Iraq's oil.

[yardwork]

19. I know that I have become very cynical

I believe that BushCo know full well that Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks on 9/11. They've deliberately lied to the American public in order to get support for their war.

[Cocoa]

8. what about the President and Vice President telling us repeatedly?

did that have the same effect?

[many a good man]

9. If YOU thought Saddam engineered 911 you'd wanna...

...kick his ass, too. Wouldn't you? Alas, that only happens in BushWorld.

If we could puncture this mass public hallucination John Kerry would sweep the nation in a landslide!

[reprobate]

10. Someone finally said it: Polls are used as a political tool.

If a poll has the 'zogby' name on it I'll believe it. Otherwize, I know some political stringpuller is behind it.

[RobinA]

18. Nobody I Ran Into

thought it was Saddam...until later. I figured it was Islamic extremists, of which Saddam was not one. I later discovered that a lot of people thought it was Saddam and I could never figure out why. When I first heard officials equate the two, I went "Uh??" I was a little slow.