A poll conducted in early August by the Washington Post revealed that 68 percent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein played a role in the September 11 attacks despite a continuing lack of evidence of such direct involvement or of even a vaguer relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.

Such a discrepancy between available facts, evidence and public perception should elicit at least mild interest from those concerned with the continued functioning of a well-oiled, self critical democracy based upon an informed citizenry in the United States.

This poll raises two pressing and critical questions:

Why do seven out of ten Americans believe what the Post itself called an "apparently groundless belief"?

The Post essentially answers this question in its own analysis but is hesitant to draw what seems like a painstakingly obvious conclusion: that this widely held misbelief is a direct result of the speeches and statements made by various members of the Bush administration including the president himself, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell.

A plethora of such statements are readily available from a large pool of sources and their further documentation here serves no real purpose, but some of the more telling ones are worth mentioning.

The Post asserts that this notion is "without prompting from Washington" yet goes on to document a litany of statements from the Bush administration that directly contradict this. For example, in the months following September 11, Dick Cheney said that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence operatives had meetings before the terrorist attacks took place.

In one of President Bush's most talked about statements, he said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on." In the same speech he added, "We've removed an ally of al-Qaeda." In his most recent speech, the U.S. President called Iraq the new battlefield in the "war on terrorism."

These are two from among literally dozens of statements in which Bush explicitly links September 11 with Saddam Hussein and Iraq by referring to the efforts to bring to justice those complicit in the hijackings and the U.S.' most recent war in Iraq as both being part of the "war on terrorism." When the first statement is stripped of its linguistic fat, Bush is saying that the war with Iraq began on September 11. Afghanistan is very rarely mentioned in these statements.

How does this affect how the rest of the world thinks of and judges Americans and their government?

As the results of this poll are considered throughout the world it can only produce feelings of smug satisfaction from all corners. Europeans especially will point to such information as being indicative of Americans' lack of knowledge and seriousness when it comes to history and current international affairs. Whether or not this is the case is basically moot, as that very perception is already in place and the trans-Atlantic divide seems as healthy as ever.

However, as much as polls and stories like this affect how Americans are perceived and how foreign governments deal with the United States, the timing couldn't be worse. Washington is now asking for widespread assistance and money from countries who opposed the war in the face of the now self-admitted fact that the Bush administration misjudged how long an occupation of Iraq would last, how much it would cost to rebuild Iraq, and how much oil revenue would be generated to make that rebuilding process a self-funding effort, as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz once claimed.

Finally, on the domestic front, the situation is bad for President Bush and his prospects for reelection as Democrats will surely point to these numbers as evidence that the Bush administration misled the public into what many Americans now feel was an ill-conceived war. Indeed, President Bush's approval ratings have been steadily falling, primarily due to the economy but partly due to the continued instability and loss of American life in Iraq. In May, a Time Magazine/CNN poll of registered voters showed that Bush had a 63 percent approval rating. Now, in early September, that approval rating is down to 52 percent. If the Bush administration fails to show evidence tying together al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, in addition to failing to prevent the proportionally high number of American casualties in Iraq, the American people may begin to feel more and more alienated from this administration.

Report Drafted By:
Matthew Riemer

http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=88&language_i