One Irish politician said, “if there were no weapons of mass destruction then the war was fought on a lie.” In the US, over 40% of the public, according to a recent poll, either believe that WMDs were found in Iraq or are unclear on whether they were found. The US has moved on from the war. Iraq is over and done, and the fact that the entire basis for war was lies, falsehoods, fabricated evidence, and spin doesn’t bother us in the least. Meanwhile, the continued reports of civil unrest and American mismanagement in Iraq doesn’t phase anyone here…and people still refuse to accept that we will need to be in that region for several more years, and provide hundreds of billions in aid at the same time that we are cutting taxes and raising the debt ceiling for an already struggling economy.
There is an apt quote that explains all this. It comes from way back seven years ago in the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires had attacked a bar and Xander knew one thing for certain – the town would never be the same. Except that it was. People had moved on, made up stories and excuses, substitued “gangs on PCP” in place of vicious monsters. Well-established worldviews won out over scary and new and real.
Giles commented thusly: “People have a tendency to rationalize what they can and forget what they can’t.” Pretty much sums up our country, I think.
Um, that means that about 60% of the public *doesn’t* believe our own government’s avowals that Iraq had WMDs… I don’t know what you mean that nobody is phased… Everywhere I look people are up in arms about it. They were demonstating all over the place. Every liberal-to-moderate news source is tearing the administration to shreds. Rallies have become the vogue for our generation. Just because life hasn’t come to a screeching halt and “Friends” is still on every Thursday doesn’t mean the nation is politically complacent. The problem is that the government isn’t listening. =)
Lemme see…msnbc.com, nope. cnn.com? nope. fox.com? nope. abcnews.com, nope. Well, you just keep up those highly effective protests.
The survey said nothing about people believing the government, it demonstrated that the media+government is spinning so well that 40% of people are confused into believing that WMDs have already been found in Iraq, when they have not. Whoops.
…Oh, then you mean to protest the conservative media monopoly. Not the population’s complacence. The way you put it _now_, perhaps people can’t help it if they’re fed so much bullshit. Once again, I agree with you that there’s a problem, but think that you’re misattributing the problem.
No, look at poll results. “More than three-quarters (79 percent) in the CBS poll believe Iraq does have those weapons [of mass destruction], even though the United States has not found them yet. That is only a four-point decline from a nearly identical question asked about a month before.” It is about both the news not reporting it (although since I’ve posted this it has been reported more, but often in the context of Tony Blair being pressured), and about the public not repsonding to reports, ignoring them, or plain not hearing them. The statistic is from http://www.thehill.com/campaign/060403_mellman.aspx