About Half American Public Is

Juan Cole 02/24/2004

About Half the American Public is Terminally Stupid

A new poll shows that 51% of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the US went to war with it last spring. Some 47% believe that clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda has been found in that country. Both of these allegations are false (whether they are lies is a different matter), and any halfway informed person should know by now that they are false. What do half of Americans believe happened to all that WMD? It is not as if it can just be made to disappear with the wave of a wand; and it certainly doesn’t exist in Iraq today.

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page