[ppi] [ppiindia] Bush's believe it or not

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD24Aa01.html

Bush's believe it or not
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - US public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) continue to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances
that President George W Bush will be re-elected, according to a survey and
analysis released on Thursday.

Despite statements by such officials as the Bush administration's former
chief weapons inspector, David Kay; its former anti-terrorism chief, Richard
Clarke; former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix; as well as
admissions by senior administration officials themselves, a majority of the
public still believes Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group
and had WMD stocks or programs before US troops invaded the country 13
months ago.

"The public is not getting a clear message about what the experts are saying
about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and its WMD program," said Steven Kull,
director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the
University of Maryland, which conducted the survey.

"The analysis suggests that if the public were to more clearly perceive what
the experts themselves are saying on these issues, there is a good chance
this could have a significant impact on their attitudes about the war and
even on how they vote in November," he added.

The survey and analysis found a high correlation between those perceptions
and support for Bush himself in the presidential election in November.

Among the 57 percent of respondents who said they believed Iraq was either
"directly involved" in carrying out the September 11, 2001, 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, Senator John Kerry.

Among the 40 percent of respondents who said they believed there was no
connection at all between Saddam and al-Qaeda or that ties consisted only of
minor contacts or visits, on the other hand, only 28 percent said they
intended to vote for Bush, while 68 percent said their ballots would go to
Kerry.

The survey, which was based on interviews with a random sample of 1,311
respondents in March, was released amid a series of polls that indicate that
Bush and Kerry are in a virtual tie less than seven months before the actual
election.

While Kerry appeared to be leading in the wake of last month's congressional
testimony by Clarke, who accused the Bush administration of being
insufficiently seized with the threat posed by al-Qaeda before the September
11 attacks, the president, who in recent weeks has spent an unprecedented
amount of money on television advertising so early in the campaign, has
closed the gap and, according to one Washington Post poll published this
week, pulled slightly ahead.

The latest PIPA study is remarkable because it shows that public perceptions
about Iraq, or at least about the threat it posed before the US invasion,
are lagging far behind what acknowledged experts have themselves concluded
and whose findings have been reported in the mass media.

Virtually all independent experts and even senior administration officials
have concluded since the war that ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda before the
war were virtually non-existent, and even Bush himself has explicitly
dismissed the notion that Baghdad had a hand in the September 11 attacks.

Yet the March poll found that 20 percent of respondents believe that Iraq
was directly involved in the attacks - the same percentage as on the eve of
the war, in February 2003.

Similarly, the percentages of those who believe Iraq provided "substantial
support" to al-Qaeda (37 percent) and those who believe contacts were
minimal (29 percent) are also virtually unchanged from 13 months before. As
of March 2004, 11 percent said there was "no connection at all", up 4
percent from February 2003.

Some - but surprisingly little - change was found in answers to whether
Washington had found concrete evidence since the war that substantiated a
Saddam-al-Qaeda link. Thus, in June 2003, 52 percent of respondents said
evidence had been found, while only 45 percent said so last month.

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 program for developing them (22 percent). In contrast, 39 percent said
Baghdad had limited WMD-related activities that fell short of an active
program - what Kay, as the Central Intelligence Agency'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".
There was similar confusion with respect to the WMD question: despite all
the publicity given Kay's, Blix's, and the findings of other independent
experts that Iraq did not have WMD before the war, nearly two-thirds of
respondents said they believed that most experts said it did have them (30
percent) or that experts were evenly divided on the issue (35 percent).

The poll found a high correlation between beliefs about prewar Iraq with
support for going to war with Iraq and for the intentions to vote for Bush
in November.

Among those who perceived experts as saying Iraq had WMD, 72 percent said
they would vote for Bush, and 23 percent said they would vote for Kerry,
while among those who perceived the experts as concluding that Iraq did not
have WMD, 23 percent said they would vote for Bush and 74 percent for Kerry.

The opinion of experts was found to be very important in predicting support
for Bush or Kerry, as well as support for the war itself, according to Kull.
While 38 percent of a discrete sample within the survey said they believed
that Iraq had WMD before the war, the percentage dropped to 21 percent after
they were informed later in the questionnaire that Kay had concluded that
Baghdad was engaged only in minor activities for developing WMD.

Confusion over what the experts are saying, according to Kull, could be due
to a number of factors, including the repetition by Bush (most recently in
his press conference last week) and other senior officials, such as Vice
President Dick Cheney, that Iraq had once used WMD, and the fact that in the
electronic mass media, in particular, Iraq is still discussed in the context
of the "war on terror".

In another misperception, 59 percent of the public believed that world
public opinion either favored Washington going to war (21 percent) or
believed that global views were "evenly balanced" (38 percent). Only 41
percent appeared aware that a majority of world public opinion opposed the
US-led war.

Those who were aware or were made aware that world opinion opposed the war
were more likely to think the decision to attack Iraq was wrong and less
likely to support Bush. Those who believed, on the other hand, that world
opinion supported the war were substantially more likely to support Bush and
think that going to war was correct.

(Inter Press Service)



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