So...after
David Kay,
Charles Duelfer,
no mobile labs,
no 'tubes of doom',
no nerve agent stockpiles - after it turned out that Rumsfeld et. al. didn't really
know where they were - after hilarious
comedy skits and
endless ridicule - thank God Americans have finally realized they were lied to about the threat of imminent annhilation, and will be more circumspect the next time such charges are bandied about. Right?
Yeah...
right. I thought I'd picked up a vintage issue of the S.F.
Chronicle this morning on BART when I read this:
-- Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq. [link]
Yes: that's
half, as in
...their rockers.
I'm flabbergasted," said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.
"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.
Not surprising to see Massing's flabber all gasted - he's
written and spoken on this topic extensively - but the Waco Kid may have been more perceptive about that 'informed public' -
You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West.
You know... morons.
~Blazing Saddles~ (1974)
Lest you think this is all old news, consider the very end of the AP story:
As Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas battled in Lebanon on July 21, a Fox News segment suggested, with no evidence, yet another destination for the supposed doomsday arms.
"ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH'S HANDS?" asked the headline, lingering for long minutes on TV screens in a million American homes.
Maybe if we went door-to-door....