San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, August 7th 2006

Half of US believes Hussein had WMD.by C. J Hanley, Associated Press.Poll finds myth endures despite debunking;many blame talk radio, blogs, White House.“Do you believe in Iraqi WMD?” Did Sadam Hussein’sgovernment have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds,and experts see many reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headlinehere or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing needfor people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.People tend to become “independent of reality” in thesecircumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.The reality in this case is that after a 16 month, $900-million plusinvestigation, the U.S. weapons hunters, known as the Iraq SurveyGroup, declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biologicaland nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight.That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors,who in 2002/03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.~Despite this a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50% ofUS. respondents up from 36% last year, said they believe Iraq didhave the forbidden arms when U.S troops invaded in March 2003,An attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.Timing may explain some of the poll result. Two Republican Law -makers,Pennsylvania’s Sen. Rick Santorum and Michigan’s Rep. Peter Hoekstra,released an intelligence report saying 500 chemical munitions had beencollected in Iraq since the 2003 Invasion.“I think the Harris Poll was measuring people’s surprise athearing this after being told for so long there were no WMD.in the country.” said Hoekstra spokesman Jamal Ware.But the Pentagon and outside experts stressed that theseabandoned shells were 15 years old or more, their chemicalcontents were degraded, and they were unusable as artilleryordnance. Since the 1990s, such “orphan” munitions, from among160,000 made by Iraq and destroyed, have turned up on oldbattlefields and elsewhere in Iraq, ex-inspectors say.In other words, this is no surprise.“These are not stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.” saidScott Ritter, ex-Marine who was a U.N. inspector in the 1990s.“They weren’t deliberately withheld from inspectors by the Iraqis”Conservative commentator D. Murdock, who trumpeted Hoeksta’sannouncement in his syndicated column, complained in an interview thatthe press “didn’t give the story the play it deserved” but in some quarters itwas headlined. “Our top story tonight, the nation abuzz today” Was howFox news led its report on the old, stray shells.Talk-radio hosts and their callers seized on it. Feedback to blogsgrew intense. Kull and others see an influence of opinion that’smore sustained than the odd headline. “The basic dynamic is in the insistent repetition by the Bush administration of the original argument”said John Prados, author of the 2004 book, “Hoodwinked: The DocumentsThat Reveal How Bush Sold Us A War” Administration statements stilldescribe Hussein’s Iraq as a threat. Despite the official findings, Secretaryof State, Condoleezza Rice has allowed only that “perhaps”, WMD.weren’t in Iraq. And Bush himself, since 2003, has repeatedly insisted onone plainly false point: that Hussein rebuffedthe U.N. inspectors in 2002. The facts are that Iraq, after a four yearhiatus in cooperating with inspections ~ acceded to the U.N. SecurityCouncil’s demand and allowed experts ~to conduct more than 700 inspections of potential weapons sitesfrom November 27, 2002 to March 16, 2003. The inspectors saidthey could wrap up their work within months.Instead, a US invasion aborted that work.~“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all,it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, andit is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it isdemocracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or acommunist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people canalways be brought to the biddings of the leaders. It is easy.All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, anddenounce the pacifist for lack of patriotism and exposingthe country to danger. It works the same in every country”.Hermann Goring, Hitler’s Reich-Marshallat the Nuremberg Trials, after WW11~“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whipthe citizenry into a patriotic fervour, for patriotism is indeed adouble-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as itnarrows the mind.  And when the drums of war have reached afever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed,the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism,will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.How do I know? For this is what I have done.And I am Caesar.” (Julius Caesar)~“Don’t the Bible say we must love everybody?”“Oh the Bible! To be sure! It says a great many things.But then, nobody ever thinks of doing them”.From, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe.*Paramo of bedazzled GrasshoppersWho is that Universal Monarch ~with the brightest colours on his wings?We’re on holiday, not bearing our hearts.So let’s take it up, ‘Pre Programmed’ Performer.Giving you a bit of a buzz ~ Chi, a Free Spirit.Never been easy to shut the blinging Mind.My energy is on the rise, its just given in,connecting to the People ~ Vibration