Harris has a new poll showing 62% of respondents believe Iraq had strong ties to al-Qaeda and 47% believe Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks. Where the heck do these people come from? The Harris press release itself boggles at the "surprising" support for claims "not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true", including also 46% who deny that the UN weapons inspectors prevented Iraq from developing nuclear weapons, 44% who believe some of the Sep11 hijackers were from Iraq, and 36% who believe "Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the US invaded". That last could be quibbled over regarding the meaning of "weapons of mass destruction", but the promised stockpiles and active production facilities certainly weren't there. I also worry about the 61% who say Iraq was a serious threat to US security.
Posted by Warrior Tang at February 26, 2005 03:59 PM
The large number surprises me, though I'm not at all surprised some people still believe this. I posted something I overheard just this week. The only way I can explain it is blind faith. The faith, in this case, is in Faux News, Limbaugh, etc.
Posted by: andante at February 26, 2005 05:11 PMI think some people build up an emotional attachment to the falsehoods once they fall for them. And as lies require additional lies to maintain when scrutinized, if one feels they must believe one false argument then they have to believe the next when that falls apart and then the next and the next, and so on. It builds up to a point that when they see something that doesn't fit into their worldview, it is rejected without any consideration. It's not merely disrupting but becomes personal when one has invested so much emotion in the chain of falsehoods, and many people are just not capable of admitting that they have been wrong about an important issue on which they've held and expressed strong opinions.
I remember when the hot new story was that Syria took all of Saddam's WMD and buried it in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Not that it's completely out of the question that this might have happened, but there was no evidence and you'd have to believe they did it under the eyes of several major powers' intelligence agencies who were all looking for exactly this transfer and that Israel would permit so many hundreds of tons of poison gas to fall into the hands of Hezbollah. With so much stacked against the rumour from the beginning and nothing supporting it, I still saw a few people treat it as gospel because it explained how we couldn't find the WMDs that Saddam had right up until the invasion.
My sympathies regarding your sister-in-law, by the way.