Invincible ignorance

Why have Bush's poll numbers gone up after so much disastrous news from Iraq? One answer can be found in this stunning article from the Inter Press Service News Agency, titled "Majority Still Believe in Iraq's WMD, al-Qaeda Ties." A few key points:


Among the 57 percent of respondents who said they believed Iraq was either ''directly involved'' in carrying out the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon or had provided ''substantial support'' to al-Qaeda, 57 percent said they intended to vote for Bush and 39 percent said they would choose his Democratic foe, John Kerry.


57 percent? Still?

As I have noted often in private, and now in public, a week after the World Trade Center attack a CBS News poll found that only three percent of the American population blamed Saddam Hussein. That number jumped to stratospheric heights in the run-up to war, and apparently remains quite high. Such shifts do not happen by accident. Propaganda works.

I believe that these numbers reflect the psychology of patriotism, which is really the psychology of self-esteem. Anyone who allows himself to think that the government deliberately lied about such an important matter must then hear the nagging voice that says: "But then we had no reason to go to war. All those billions were wasted. We were the aggressor." On an unconscious level, the thought "Bush is bad" segues quickly to the forbidden idea "America is bad," which segues to the even more taboo notion that "I am bad." Rationally, we know better: We understand that a lie told by Bush is his fault, not ours. But rational thought does not always govern our opinions -- otherwise, fewer than 57 percent of our fellow citizens would believe unproven nonsense.

A few further excerpts:


As to WMD, about which there has been significantly more media coverage, 60 percent of respondents said Iraq either had actual WMD (38 percent) or had a major programme for developing them (22 percent). In contrast, 39 percent said Baghdad had limited WMD-related activities that fell short of an active programme -- what Kay as the CIA's main weapons inspector concluded in February -- or no activities at all.

Moreover, the message conveyed by Kay and other experts appears not to be getting through to the public, adds the survey, which found a whopping 82 percent of respondents saying either, ''experts mostly agree Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda'' (47 percent) or, ''experts are evenly divided on the question'' (35 percent).

Only 15 percent said it was their impression that ''experts mostly agree (that) Iraq was not providing substantial support to al-Qaeda".


Given these numbers, one can grasp why our citizens mistake the battle against Iraq's indigenous insurgency as a battle against Al Qaeda & co. As the old saying goes, the problem ain't what people don't know, but the things they know that just ain't so.

Are the American people even capable of being educated at this point?