Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD.

August 6, 2006 2:23 PM

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.

So much for Karl Rove's claim that it's wrong to think of U.S. voters as [uninformed and gullible.] Or "There are practitioners of politics who hold that voters are dumb, ill-informed and easily misled, that voters can be manipulated by a clever ad or smart line," Rove said. Previously discussed here. Thank you Fox News.

Remember the 2003 study (PDF) by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy (PIPA)? It found that "Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely to have misperceptions" about the Iraq war than all other media consumers." Also the study found that "[t]hose who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions." For instance, of the "three key misperceptions" -- which the study listed as "the beliefs that ... links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that WMD have been found in Iraq and that world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq."
posted by ArunK (97 comments total)

"world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq."

Now that is astonishing. Didn't they hear about 'Freedom Fries?'
posted by sindark at 2:28 PM on August 6, 2006

[more inside]?
posted by reklaw at 2:37 PM on August 6, 2006

They were never 'Freedom Fries' at Mickey D's.
posted by paulsc at 2:38 PM on August 6, 2006

Title on the front page so the post makes sense?
posted by beerbajay at 2:45 PM on August 6, 2006

Why exactly would people stop thinking they had WMDs now? What has changed in the last year or so?
posted by smackfu at 2:45 PM on August 6, 2006

So the point here is that you are smarter than most people?

Congratulations!
posted by LarryC at 2:48 PM on August 6, 2006

[more inside] is a good friend.

You don't know what I'm up against. Because this FPP is full of, of, of things that are only correct because they're grammatical, but they're tough on the ear, you see. This is a very wearying one. It's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. I think, no, because of the way it's written, you need to break it up, because it's not, it's not as conversationally written.

As for the subject matter, I fear we might have forgotten the lesson of JR "Bob" Dobbs, who asked us to consider for a moment the stupidity of the average person, then noted that half the people you meet, statistically speaking, will be even dumber than that. I suspect none of this way-over-there stuff will begin to matter to most people in the USA until their everyday ways of life are drastically affected. Let's see how this gas thing goes...
posted by First Post at 2:48 PM on August 6, 2006

what's more important is that these attempts to mislead people still continue to this day. From the article:

As Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas battled in Lebanon on July 21, a Fox News segment suggested, with no evidence, yet another destination for the supposed doomsday arms.
"ARE SADDAM HUSSEIN'S WMDS NOW IN HEZBOLLAH'S HANDS?" asked the headline, lingering for long minutes on TV screens in a million American homes.

posted by mulligan at 2:49 PM on August 6, 2006

Of course, the question is silly.

"Did Iraq have WMDs?" Of course they did. How many mustard gas shells have we dug up in the last three years, e.g.? Even Scott Ritter noted that 5-10% of Iraq's WMDs were probably still in country before the war.

"Did Iraq have a reconstituted WMD program?" Hell no. But that's where the justification lies -- that Saddam was trying to get his program restarted and already had it restarted.

And that's the problem. This administration went to war arguing that question two was true, then after the war said that all along it was question one that was true -- and implying that it was some justification for the war. And everyone let the nuance differences slide right by.
posted by dw at 2:49 PM on August 6, 2006

Yet, more americans now believe we should leave Iraq. There must be some overlap, people who believe WMDs were found and still think we should leave.

Part of it is that very small amounts of WMDs were found (a single binary chemical weapon shell was found), as well as old degenerated stuff. There may be some people who know about this, and decide that it "counts" as weapons of mass destruction.
posted by delmoi at 2:50 PM on August 6, 2006

Is it just me, or are you essentially saying "There is a divide in America and the half that I'm not on is simply dumb and misinformed."
posted by b_thinky at 2:53 PM on August 6, 2006

Why exactly would people stop thinking they had WMDs now? What has changed in the last year or so?

Senator Anal Lube held a press conference announcing that WMDs had been found. He was talking about degraded chemicals that could no longer be used as weapons (Mustard gas, I think, stuff we sold him). It would still have been considered dangerous.
posted by delmoi at 2:53 PM on August 6, 2006

Is it just me, or are you essentially saying "There is a divide in America and the half that I'm not on is simply dumb and misinformed."

Looks like it. Arrogance, however, is not a fallacy. 50% of the people in the nation must by definition be below average in intelligence. It's absurd to say that something is true simply because 50% of the people believe it.
posted by delmoi at 2:55 PM on August 6, 2006

delmoi: Looks like it. Arrogance, however, is not a fallacy. 50% of the people in the nation must by definition be below average in intelligence. It's absurd to say that something is true simply because 50% of the people believe it.

I agree with that, but I don't think either side generally gets more dumb voters than the other. And both sides pander to dumb voters as well.

But I think the question "does Iraq have anything to do with al Qaeda" is misleading. Lots of people would argue that the entire situation in the middle-east, including in Iraq, allowed groups like al-Qaeda and plots like 9/11 to fester, and they'd answer "yes" to that survey question. This doesn't necessarily equate believing Saddam and Osama enjoy picnics together.

The main reason there is a divide in America is because people look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions. To infer that one side has been tricked or is stupid is kind of ridiculous.
posted by b_thinky at 3:03 PM on August 6, 2006

"50% of the people in the nation must by definition be below average in intelligence."

Wrong! 50% must by definition be below the median in intelligence. Far more than 50% can be below the average, and that number probably approaches 65 to 80%. Afterall, the left has its own share of idiots.
posted by mischief at 3:10 PM on August 6, 2006

People are stupid. Some people are stupid most of the time. Some people are stupid part of the time. A huge majority are stupid all of the time. But goddamned few are stupid NONE of the time.

The net result is that saying most people are stupid is an accurate statement and not symptomatic of arrogance. It means you pay attention, have sliver of perception, and have left your home every once and a while. Doesn't mean your aren't stupid SOME of the time, too, however.

You want to find out HOW stupid people really are, go to USENET, over to rec.martial.arts. Read THAT shit. THAT place is the cushion on the Dipshit Chair in the dead center of the Moron Room in Idiot Castle on the north shore of Cretin Lake.

Every day there are guys talking about the secret WMD in the Bekka valley and how Iran and Syria are making secret nukes with fuel they got from Saddam.
posted by tkchrist at 3:10 PM on August 6, 2006 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: THAT place is the cushion on the Dipshit Chair in the dead center of the Moron Room in Idiot Castle on the north shore of Cretin Lake.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:16 PM on August 6, 2006

/derail

Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying "most people are stupid?" No you have not. It is the chant of the B+ student, the homily of the 115 IQs.
posted by LarryC at 3:17 PM on August 6, 2006 [2 favorites]

B_thinky: Nope. If a person continues to believe, after all these years, and after Bush himself has admitted that there weren't any stockpiles of chemical weapons, that Saddam had huge stockpiles of chemical weapons they are either a) stupid, or b) deluding themselves for political reasons.

I'd class belief in Iraqi chemical weapons in the same category as flat-earthism, astrology, palmistry, and belief in Tarot cards. Its a position taken either by people who are too stupid to know better, or people who just can't handle reality.

It isn't arrogance to say "the people who believe in flat-earthism are dumb, and I'm not one of them", its a simple fact.
posted by sotonohito at 3:17 PM on August 6, 2006

Wrong! 50% must by definition be below the median in intelligence.

Wrong! An equal number of people must by definition have higher than median intelligence and lower than median intelligence. If the 50th percentile of something itself contains a nonzero proportion of the population, less than 50% will lie above or below it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:19 PM on August 6, 2006

my god, THAT place is the cushion on the Dipshit Chair in the dead center of the Moron Room in Idiot Castle on the north shore of Cretin Lake so needs to go on a t-shirt, a poster, a mural...something. diz-amn!!!
posted by lord_wolf at 3:21 PM on August 6, 2006

I agree with that, but I don't think either side generally gets more dumb voters than the other. And both sides pander to dumb voters as well.

Sure, I wouldn't disagree with that. There are stupid people on both sides. But look at something like global warming anthropogenic climate change: It's obviously happening, and yet many people don't believe it.

Lets say someone asked a question "Were degraded, useless weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?" If a pollster asked me that I would probably say yes. If a pollster asked "Were useable weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq." I would say no.

But what if they ask, "Were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq"? Does that question map to the first one above or only the second? It's not so clear-cut. I would answer no; because I don't think people meant the degraded stuff when they were talking about going to war, but someone else might answer yes.

The problem is when manipulators go out there and say simply "WMD were found in Iraq." They mean the first, initially (like Santorum) but as it gets repeated people forget the complex truth and merely repeat that sentence, confusing people.
posted by delmoi at 3:21 PM on August 6, 2006

Metafilter: the cushion on the Dipshit Chair
posted by anansi at 3:22 PM on August 6, 2006

@ ROU: Only if your measurements are discrete (as in IQ), but then, most people make that common mistake. ;-P
posted by mischief at 3:30 PM on August 6, 2006

"Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history."
posted by homunculus at 3:31 PM on August 6, 2006

Wrong! An equal number of people must by definition have higher than median intelligence and lower than median intelligence. If the 50th percentile of something itself contains a nonzero proportion of the population, less than 50% will lie above or below it.

Well, if you consider intelligence to be a real-valued variable, it's possible that no person sits at the actual mean value. Of course, it's not guaranteed that 50% will fall below the mean in general, but if you're talking about a gaussian distribution they will. With the median, you can make the quantiles small enough then no two sample points will fit in the same one, and the median will be the average of the in the middle.
posted by delmoi at 3:33 PM on August 6, 2006

"Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying "most people are stupid?" No you have not."

Have you ever attended a Mensa meeting?
posted by Tenuki at 3:34 PM on August 6, 2006

The interesting thing here is not just that 50% of the American public now believe Saddam had WMDs. The interesting thing is that the percentage has been rising. I believe in 2003 it was 36%.

At the rate things are going, by the time GW is due to leave office, the war will be fully justified in the public mind, a few cranks notwithstanding.
posted by adamrice at 3:49 PM on August 6, 2006

Hold it, hold it, hold it. I thought this post was about the grim success of Bush and Co.'s propaganda re: Iraq and WMD's, and how disgraceful it is that not only have these lies been repeated endlessly, but that they have been taken up as recieved truth by many.

A lot of those people are not "dumb", at all. They're casting around for a reason, any sensible reason, for the folly that was the invasion and is the continuing occupation. They may have family or friends in the army who they don't wish to see die senselessly, they may just want to desperately continue to trust that Bush knows what he's doing, they may still be clinging to the idea that because Bush obstensibly shares their religion, he's doing the right thing.

Because the alternative is too hard to contemplate. But that's not stupidity; that's just being human.
posted by jokeefe at 3:49 PM on August 6, 2006

Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying "most people are stupid?" No you have not.

Good lordyee loo. Though I have never been to a mensa meeting...

[cough] 131 IQ [/cough]

And I know how stupid I can be. Can you IMAGINE how stupid most people MUST be?

I know plenty of super smarty pantses in the 140's to 150's IQ range and 75% of every conversation is how stupid the rest of the planet is...

...the other 25% has math in it and my eyes glaze over.
posted by tkchrist at 3:52 PM on August 6, 2006

Jokeefe it's called cognitive dissonance. And your right. But it's about collective guilt. Deep down they KNOW they were wrong. That is what drives the mad scramble for truthiness. Guilt.
posted by tkchrist at 3:54 PM on August 6, 2006

I've tested pretty high and I feel like a freakin' moron most of the time.
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:57 PM on August 6, 2006

"Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying 'most people are stupid?' No you have not. It is the chant of the B+ student, the homily of the 115 IQs."

Heh. Speaking for myself and several close friends who are all 140+ IQs—which doesn't mean anything much at all—none of us go around talking about how stupid we think everyone is. In my case I know it's because I no longer have any sort of simplistic idea of what human intelligence is or how that would mean that I'm good at using my brain better than most people. All I know at this middle-aged stage of my life is that I'm awfully good at some things, mediocre at others, and bad at many more. I can't really account for all those varied things in the other people I meet and, for the most part, I no longer makes estimates of "intelligence" in other people, even privately to myself, unless someone seems extraordinary. I can't speak for my best friend, but I know him very well, and he, too, seems pretty befuddled about this whole "intelligence" thing.

But then what Tenuki said. Certainly there are a lot of people with IQs that test very high who do piss and moan about all the stupid people. It may or may not be relevant that me and my friends are all the sorts who wouldn't be caught dead at a Mensa meeting.

So it's ambiguous.

However, the one thing that I do know, and am not shy about, is that regardless of how smart I may or may not be, I work harder, both in terms of learning about stuff and also in being self-critical, than most people I've known, regardless of how smart they were thought to be. So I don't really think the issue here is stupidity. It's something else.

And that something else is probably most strongly accounted for by selection bias.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:02 PM on August 6, 2006

Yeah, yet another badly worded poll:

Do you believe that the following statements are true or not true?
...
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.

As dw pointed out above, a few isolated or degraded chemical weapons have turned up, so of course people agree that "Iraq had weapons of mass destruction". Heck, I'm not even sure how I would have responded to that question—the true and correct response is, "Well, sort of..."

What the pollsters should have asked was, "Did Iraq have stockpiles?" or "Did Iraq have an active program?" (Or even all three!) Of course, that might not have produced the desired result: an opportunity to write news stories about how dumb Americans are.
posted by The Tensor at 4:03 PM on August 6, 2006

Argh. Is this one of the reasons why the American cultural divide is so huge? You guys are going to have to get past the idea that people on the right are stupid. I've known a lot of-- for lack of a better term-- "stupid" people on the left, too. Sitting around and patting our backs over our high IQ scores (and when has a high IQ meant much of anything except an ability to solve puzzles?) is not going to help, and it's certainly not going to convince all those people who believe that Saddam was behind 9/11 or that Iraq had WMDs of the truth.

I'm wedded to the truth, but then I'm also obsessed with the Godless Apocalypse of environmental collapse and global warming and peak oil. It's not a happy place to be. I'd rather be content in thinking that there was a logic to all this, and a comprehensible narrative with an endpoint, instead of a bunch of simians who somehow genetically mutated towards sentience and who have fucked up our entire home planet. But I can't, because I have respect for facts and for science. It would be nice to let that go, sometimes. In fact I think I will. I'm going to go out and build myself one of them giant Easter Island heads right now, and see if the gods from outer space will arrive and Fix Everything.

*cough*

[/rant]
posted by jokeefe at 4:08 PM on August 6, 2006

Invading Iraq was a huge mistake and clinging to ignorance will never change that. Amerikans can bury their heads up to their asses and pretend whatever they want. Iraq was minding its own business before our "conservative" government decided to launch a war there. Now all the terrible consequences of that insane decision is our problem whether we know it or not.

You can't wake up people who are pretending to be asleep. Unfortunately our leaders are also asleep. Too bad. They still managed to shackle us to a chain reaction over which they have no control.
posted by chance at 4:15 PM on August 6, 2006

I struggle with these partisan politics because each side thinks the other is stupid, evil, and has done absolutely no good. I refuse to accept that either Democrats or Republicans are perfect, they both suck. Vote for the individuals that match your viewpoint, and acknowledge that both sides have valid points, and that both have made mistakes.
posted by blue_beetle at 4:17 PM on August 6, 2006

People suck.
posted by nightchrome at 4:17 PM on August 6, 2006

posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 4:18 PM on August 6, 2006 [1 favorite]

I should think the majority of Americans simply have no interest in Iraq. When asked about WMDs they just remember something they heard about 3 years ago and don't care that the facts may have changed since.

Does it reflect on your intelligence if you say Ned Flanders' wife is Maude?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 4:23 PM on August 6, 2006

This thread has suffered from having been framed in terms of stupidity v intelligence, when the issue is really one of ignorance v knowledge. It doesn't take all that much intelligence to pay attention to the news.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:24 PM on August 6, 2006

Unless we're directly talking about IQ scores for some relevant reason, any mention of mine, or anyone else's, seems like narcissistic bullshit. How the hell can anyone justify dropping that score into a conversation if it's not directly relevant? It's the equivalent of talking about foreign policy and mentioning that you drive a Ferrari. Hey, it's got nothing to do with foreign policy, but watch me drop names to create an aura of credibility and flex my wallet.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:25 PM on August 6, 2006

Dubya em dees!

I long for a world without needless euphemism. Maybe then we could have an actual discussion.
posted by blacklite at 4:27 PM on August 6, 2006

To be fair, I think that with regard to politics, the self-critical and diversely-informed is itself a temperment that translates to a political type; and insofar as that type in a given cultural context affiliates more strongly with one political viewpoint or party and less so the others, then it isn't the case that you can say there's a curse on all their houses. One side just might very well be "smarter" than the other(s).

The thing is, though, is that all sides will, and do, claim that enlightened group as their own and especially in a political context like the US's with what amounts to the number of sides being only "two", that enlightened group is really not much more likely to side with one than the other because there are so many more factors in play which will, in individual cases, overwhelm the much weaker asymmetries in affiliation for the enlightened with respect to their enlightenment.

And then there's the deeper problem that so many supposed matters of fact are still so highly determined by theologies, philosophies, and ideologies that are unprovable and thus being widely informed and self-critical can only get you so far. There are irreconcilable differences between worldviews.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:27 PM on August 6, 2006

Well, EB, you know what Talking Heads said: Facts are useless in emergencies.
posted by jokeefe at 4:36 PM on August 6, 2006

Amerikans

Sir, your use of the letter k in this word has at once suggested, argued, and proved to me that America is exactly equivalent to the Klan, and, furthermore, vaguely german-looking, and therefore a fascist rogue state run by Nazis.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 4:44 PM on August 6, 2006

Unless we're directly talking about IQ scores for some relevant reason, any mention of mine, or anyone else's, seems like narcissistic bullshit.

Sounds like somebody is a dummy.

[points and snickers]

SeizeTheDay I have a big dick, too.

Argh. Is this one of the reasons why the American cultural divide is so huge? You guys are going to have to get past the idea that people on the right are stupid. I've known a lot of-- for lack of a better term-- "stupid" people on the left, too.

Yeah. Go to any New Age gathering. We know this. "People" are stupid.

Sitting around and patting our backs over our high IQ scores...

Jesus H Frigin Keee-RIHST! NOBODY is bragging. Ok. Relax on the IQ score thing people. It was an idle little joke. Lighten the fuck up. Forget I said it.

If it makes you insecure Lutheran net-nannies feel any better I graduated highschool with a C average. Fuck.

My point was I'm a fairly smart guy who is himself susceptible to "truthiness." AS are 99% of us. But at some point you are overwhelmed by facts and have to admit when a belief is not supported by reality. Also a symptom of intelligence. That your beliefs conform to REALITY, even when it's uncomfortable and slightly humiliating.

THAT is what most Americans are NOT doing. Therefore it is easy, and supportable by fact, for me to maintain that most people are stupid. And knowing and excepting that we can move forward to help educate them. Or keep them away from sharp or explody things.

Heck, I'm not even sure how I would have responded to that question—the true and correct response is, "Well, sort of..."

No. No. No. The operative word in WMD is "MASS." And if mass damage - in the the tens of thousands - could not be proven from what was found, then they are not WMD.

Hell. With fox's benchmark on WMD if they find a gallon of Clorox Bleach, only one or two ingredients away from Chlorine bleach, it's WMD?
posted by tkchrist at 4:48 PM on August 6, 2006

"Unless we're directly talking about IQ scores for some relevant reason, any mention of mine, or anyone else's, seems like narcissistic bullshit. How the hell can anyone justify dropping that score into a conversation if it's not directly relevant? It's the equivalent of talking about foreign policy and mentioning that you drive a Ferrari. Hey, it's got nothing to do with foreign policy, but watch me drop names to create an aura of credibility and flex my wallet."

It's relevant to the quote to which I responding in a variety of ways. And I very specifically belittled its meaningfulness and explained how I no longer think, as a rule, about how generally smart or average or dumb individual people are. I don't know what that means anymore. I thought I did when I was younger; I no longer do today. I also made it clear that I see my own exceptions and competence as very narrow and my incompetence as wide-ranging.

There's an informal embargo about mentioning one's IQ, even when it's quite relevant (as it was in this particular thread of the conversation, though not very much so the thread as a whole) because most people still think it's a meaningful number in some important sense and even most of us who don't in spite of ourselves still have some unexpurgated sentiments that it is meaningful in some important sense. But it's not. It may be specifically meaningful in some way (and I think it probably is, though I don't have any good ideas exactly how), but it certainly is not meaningful in any sense that should involve either pride or shame in a general conversation. Just as, I might add, the ownership of a Ferrari should not.

It's really not that important. It seems to me that, at least among the folks here at MeFi who are mostly generally thought to be "smart" by their own and others estimation but who display a real fastidiousness about "IQ", we're indirectly encouraging its mystique and reifying its supposed value judgment about living, breathing people by carefully not mentioning it in the same way a gentleman does not mention all the awards he's been given or trophies he's won. But those things are not comparable because an IQ score is neither an award of merit nor a medal earned in a contest. It is simply not the sort of thing to be either proud or ashamed of. Treating it as such isn't helping.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:50 PM on August 6, 2006

After mentioning your score, you proceed to say, "Can you IMAGINE how stupid most people MUST be?

If that was a joke, it was really, really bad.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:53 PM on August 6, 2006

...

*blink*

...

*blink*

...

I LIKE PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SAMMICHES!
posted by ZachsMind at 4:55 PM on August 6, 2006

There's an informal embargo about mentioning one's IQ, even when it's quite relevant (as it was in this particular thread of the conversation

God damn is this a hell of a derail, but since I'm already fairly guilty of it myself, I may as well finish what I started: The embargo is in place for various reasons, which are entirely germane to this conversation. You cannot simply dismiss the embargo as being wrong without first appreciating why people use it.

The IQ, like your sexual #(remember that conversation we had Bligh), income, SAT score, among various other factoids, are often considered incredibly private information because of the negative reactions by the audience often created by their presence. Therefore, mentioning them, especially in a context like this, reeks of intellectual masturbation. There is absolutely no use in mentioning the number because they present no new persuasive information that helps your point.

OTOH, it makes some audience members jealous, angry, awestruck, or whatever, which ultimately detract from the message. You seem to like breaking conversational boundaries and acting like your opinion of these boundaries is so right that anyone who disagrees is clearly a philistine (or that's my take, anyway).
posted by SeizeTheDay at 5:05 PM on August 6, 2006

The above disourse is a great example of just how wrong Metafilter can be sometime.

You're all very very clever!!

Pity you don't use it.
posted by wilful at 5:09 PM on August 6, 2006

"Pity you don't use it."

...

*blink*

...

*blink*

...

I LIKE BANANAS IN MY PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SAMMICHES!
posted by ZachsMind at 5:15 PM on August 6, 2006

STD your being a dick. Needlessly.

Here is the COMPLETE quote.

And I know how stupid I can be. Can you IMAGINE how stupid most people MUST be?

And I never claimed it was a GOOD joke. But it was self deprecating.

You got no problem dissecting grammar or a historical date and things like that ad-infinitum. A defacto brag on how smart you are. BUT somebody makes a joke about their IQ... oh LOOKOUT... here comes the MetaSherif.

Seriously. Lighten up.
posted by tkchrist at 5:19 PM on August 6, 2006

OTOH, it makes some audience members jealous, angry, awestruck, or whatever, which ultimately detract from the message.

Obviously.
posted by tkchrist at 5:23 PM on August 6, 2006

"You seem to like breaking conversational boundaries and acting like your opinion of these boundaries is so right that anyone who disagrees is clearly a philistine (or that's my take, anyway)."

A more charitable, and correct, interpretation is that I like to lead by example in public spaces. I violate a number of social conversational norms intentionally for the purposes of helping create the sort of world I'd prefer to live in. In my real life, for whatever combination of reasons, I don't come across as unduly provocative for doing so and thus it's worked out pretty well for me. I don't really mind making people uncomfortable when I believe they shouldn't be uncomfortable and there's a more important, deeper, social truth at stake.

This case was a snap decision based upon my sense, while considering resonding to the quote, that the supposed appropriate way to respond would be, contrary to my intentions, to necessarily implicitly support the supposed importance of IQ while claiming to deny it. Maybe I made the wrong choice.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:29 PM on August 6, 2006

As you've probably already read in the grey, I'm a tactless bastard (though lovable). Please forgive my abrasiveness.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 5:33 PM on August 6, 2006

No. No. No. The operative word in WMD is "MASS." And if mass damage - in the the tens of thousands - could not be proven from what was found, then they are not WMD.

That's just the sort of distinction—between a few isolated, forgotten chemical weapons and a stockpile capable of affecting tens of thousands of people—that I was arguing the poll question should have made. Otherwise, respondents have to somehow answer a yes-or-no question that uses the vague term "WMD" in light of the discovery of a few old chemical weapons.

Keep in mind, by the way, that the single shell used in a roadside bomb on May 15, 2004 contained the binary precursors for about 3 liters of sarin (warning: Fox News), which is about the same amount (scroll down to the fine print) released in Matsumoto, Japan in 1994 by Aum Shinrikyo, the group that later attacked the Tokyo subway. The Matsumoto release killed seven and harmed 200 more, while the later Tokyo attack (which involved about 24 liters of 25% pure sarin) killed 12 and affected nearly a thousand more.

That's pretty "mass".
posted by The Tensor at 5:41 PM on August 6, 2006

The IQ, like your sexual #(remember that conversation we had Bligh), income, SAT score, among various other factoids, are often considered incredibly private information

IQ is a bit different. For instance, your SAT score is a by-product of another goal. You only know it by virtue of having to take the test in order to pursue post-secondary education. Knowing your IQ, on the other hand, suggests that you might be the sort of person who would want to know their IQ, like members of MENSA, for instance. And that vastly increases the likelihood that you're a complete social retard.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 5:42 PM on August 6, 2006

I LIKE BANANAS IN MY PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SAMMICHES!

SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO PUT A LAYER OF TATER CHIPS INTO YOUR PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SAMMICH! AND TO WASH IT DOWN WITH PASKETTI-OHS!

THIS GIVES YOUR PBJS A MEDIAN VALUE OF TATER CHIP!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:45 PM on August 6, 2006

That's pretty "mass".

I honestly don't think so. A well trained, large, motivated, crazy guy armed with a butcher knife could kill 50 people on a subway. And its possible hundreds, while not directly affected physically, would certainly be cases for PTSD.

Once nukes were invented the scale was tipped to some absurd ideas of what strategic impact a weapon could have.

A Weapon can't be considered WMD unless it can seriously impact a targets GPD and broad population in one big plop.

3 liters of sarin? It makes the news but people were back on the subway in a month.

This is why pre-9/11 guys like Bin Laden were not considered real strategic threats. And I think that assessment is closer to correct.
posted by tkchrist at 5:57 PM on August 6, 2006

Maddona's IQ is 140, and Sharon Stone's is 154. James Wood's IQ is supposedly 186.

something to think about.
posted by delmoi at 6:10 PM on August 6, 2006

I find ROU_Xenophobe's argument compelling.
posted by LarryC at 6:18 PM on August 6, 2006

WOULD YOU LIKE A COMPLIMENTARY COPY OF MY NEWSLETTER?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:28 PM on August 6, 2006

And that vastly increases the likelihood that you're a complete social retard.

Slight derail. My IQ story is a sad one. In second grade I had real trouble with writing... penmanship and spelling etc. Though in every other regard I was fairly advanced. In fact I was top of the class.

But being the industrial edjamacashun machine (and a army base school) of the late sixties early seventies ( I was labeled. This was before people had "learning disabilities." Before dyslexia (that I have). We were simply morons or retards in those days. An if you, a square peg, didn't fit a round hole you were sifted out from all the "normal" ones.

Then this revolutionary new idea of aptitude testing came along. My parents insisted I get all these tests. They didn't want me on the short bus.

So I took them. Then in fifth grade I got an IQ test with them. I tested supposedly very high. So qualifying me to the OTHER special programs. For smarty pantses. I had to be moved ahead a year. I was already younger in my regular class. There I was a dweeb. With dweebs twice my size. In an environment that already despised dweebs.

This sucked. Do you know what it is like to be a fifth grader in a seventh grade class? It is a living hell.

I got in so many fights he got nearly expelled... from middle school. And me. The smallest guy in the class. I was cracking eight graders over the head with bike pumps in order to get respect. It was brutal.

When I went to highschool (in a new town) mercifully I got put BACK to where I should have been. Much of the damage was undone by the natural malaise of highschool. That, and the dope.

And lo why we have the angry bitter TK today.

Lesson. Do NOT have your kids IQ tested.
posted by tkchrist at 6:37 PM on August 6, 2006

Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying "most people are stupid?" No you have not. It is the chant of the B+ student, the homily of the 115 IQs.

Actually, I have, in a manner of speaking. His name was Cyril Kornbluth. He was a science fiction writer of the 1950s, who died relatively young. His novelette, "The Marching Morons," takes this idea as its theme. It's a famous story, although by today's standards, it's so politically incorrect that it probably could not be published.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 6:49 PM on August 6, 2006

OTOH, it makes some audience members...awestruck

I truly doubt that.
posted by Kwantsar at 6:56 PM on August 6, 2006

Enough with the Mensa jokes, folks. Mensans aren't that smart, and they'll generally be the first to say so. At the 98th percentile, 1 in every 50 people you meet is Mensa material, so for all practical purposes, they're all around you any time you sit down in a decent sized restaurant.

Now the Megas, well, there are only likely to be 300 of them in the U.S. Statistically speaking, there are more billionaires than Megas in the U.S.
posted by paulsc at 7:00 PM on August 6, 2006

Enough with the Mensa jokes, folks. Mensans aren't that smart, and they'll generally be the first to say so.

No, I'll be the first. I passed their stupid little entrance quizette when I was in freakin' primary school. And I know how stupid I can be. Can you IMAGINE how stupid most Mensans MUST be, to willingly belong to an "exclusive" dweeb club that the average 9YO can easily qualify for?
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:17 PM on August 6, 2006

At the 98th percentile, 1 in every 50 people you meet is Mensa material, so for all practical purposes, they're all around you any time you sit down in a decent sized restaurant.

A lot of good this precious "Homeland Security" department will do us, then!
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:28 PM on August 6, 2006

194 and ten inches here ... :oP

Seen from a sufficiently remote future viewpoint, the Bush II Administration's decision to invade Iraq is going to be right up there with the Third Reich's hard-on for Russia or Japan pulling Pearl Harbor. For 21st century America, though, the payback is apt to be a lot slower, less bloody, and much more subtle and profound.
posted by pax digita at 7:47 PM on August 6, 2006

This thread has turned into a Lernaean Hydra of derails. Sheesh! Honestly, the whole stupid vs. not stupid argument is, IMO, misplaced.

The problem isn't that people are stupid. The problem is that people are lazy. And overwhelmed. Most people can't be bothered to sift through the bewildering myriad of information sources available to them, reading (or watching) each one and divining the truth between the intersecting lines. Me? I'm obsessed with this process; I'm not sure why I am to the extent that I am, given my general feelings on the absurdity of the reality we live in--the acknowledgment of which makes me want to shut up right now and go make myself a PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SAMMICH--but I digress.

You can argue that these lazy, overwhelmed people are not doing their duty as citizens, or something else along the lines that their behavior is unacceptable. I myself certainly consider ignorance, apathy, and laziness to be some of the most troubling attitudes afflicting the public of the U.S. today (the only public I have regular access to, to form an opinion). But I think you're missing the basic problem at hand if you're forming this up as an issue of intelligence. And I think that, until we understand the root of the problem, we won't be able to solve it.

Frankly, we should be happy that the problem isn't one of intelligence (or lack thereof). Attitudes can be changed. Intelligence? Eh...not so much.
posted by Brak at 8:43 PM on August 6, 2006

posted by blue_beetle at 9:48 PM on August 6, 2006

I know plenty of super smarty pantses in the 140's to 150's IQ range and 75% of every conversation is how stupid the rest of the planet is...

Dude, that's like 75% of all conversations in the world, regardless of IQ. Have you read Metafilter? LGF? Slashdot? A huge chunk of the posts are about how stupid "other" people are. Even if you go to a gas station, the two high school dropouts who work there sit there and gab about how dumb people are.

That's what humans do. And that's why, collectively, we're pretty dumb sometimes (regardless of IQ).
posted by b_thinky at 10:23 PM on August 6, 2006

ZachsMind -- you kwack me up. (And you should try my *hot* PBJ, sourdough or french with peanut butter, fan-cee jam and a little butter, stuck in the sandwich grill for a few minutes, mmmm ...)
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 11:11 PM on August 6, 2006

Honestly, the whole stupid vs. not stupid argument is, IMO,

...Stupid?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:17 PM on August 6, 2006

You guys don't get it.

WMD, for much of America, is code for "muslim", or rather "angry muslim"

The media, including the entertainment media, be they biased left or right, has been feeding us a steady diet of "angry muslims want to kill you" for the past 40 years, roughly since 1967.

So there's really not that hard to find any pretense that will get at least 50% of the population ready to go to war against the angry muslims. WMD is a convenient cover.
posted by cell divide at 11:31 PM on August 6, 2006

go to war against the angry muslims

Yes, those angry muslims armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves, not to mention the odd viciously sharp piece of mango.
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:28 AM on August 7, 2006

And you should try my *hot* PBJ

I'd love to, but I'm married.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:30 AM on August 7, 2006

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.

Re: Intelligence. Yes, by definition there about half the population is below the median. But since intelligence runs on a bell curve, most of that half are not significantly below the median, and frankly people who are concerned about a few points on an IQ test should find something more interesting to occupy themselves with.

Human intelligence is not well represented by a single number.
posted by moonbiter at 12:55 AM on August 7, 2006

people who are concerned about a few points on an IQ test should find something more interesting to occupy themselves with

SAMMICHES
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:07 AM on August 7, 2006

Of course, the question is silly.

"Did Iraq have WMDs?" Of course they did. How many mustard gas shells have we dug up in the last three years, e.g.? Even Scott Ritter noted that 5-10% of Iraq's WMDs were probably still in country before the war.

"Did Iraq have a reconstituted WMD program?" Hell no. But that's where the justification lies -- that Saddam was trying to get his program restarted and already had it restarted.

And that's the problem. This administration went to war arguing that question two was true, then after the war said that all along it was question one that was true -- and implying that it was some justification for the war. And everyone let the nuance differences slide right by.


That, however, is not what this post is blowing raspberries about. It is snarking at the Fox-addicted idiots who believe quite correctly that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, just as Bill Clinton and Al Gore and Madeline Allbright told us he did. But we won't mention that, OK, because it doesn't fit in with the facts as we would like them.


Human intelligence is not well represented by a single number.

Still got that embarassingly low G factor, eh moonbiter?
posted by jfuller at 4:25 AM on August 7, 2006

Paste tastes good.
posted by flabdablet at 6:31 AM on August 7, 2006

Still got that embarassingly low G factor, eh moonbiter?

Yes. Still, one must make do with what one has.
posted by moonbiter at 7:02 AM on August 7, 2006

When you look at 2004, you find that those who are most likely to be dumb (both low income and low education) voted overwhelmingly for Kerry while those most likely to be smart (high income and high education) voted moderately for Bush. Among the likely intelligent, Kerry won only the trivial subset of those who have both very high education and moderate or lower income -- the college professor and journalist set.
posted by MattD at 8:56 AM on August 7, 2006

Yeah, I think that's a good example of my general point earlier. I think there well may be minor factors which push people with whatever qualities we're calling "smart" here toward one political party over the other. But there are other, stronger factors at work.

Also, although this has been implicit in a lot of what people have written in this thread, there's different ways of being "smart". I can see one kind of "smart" being attracted to liberalism while another kind is attracted to conservatism.

Similarly, if the quality we're interested in were "well-informed", I think there's the insurmountable problem that even in the restricted realm of politics there far, far, far more to know than any one person could even begin to know. Being "well-informed" is very messy, too.

I aspire to be well-informed and as a result I've worried over this problem almost my entire life. I am forced to make relatively uninformed decisions about how and where to inform myself. Basically, my aim in this endeavor is to somehow manage to work hard enough to achieve the level of being only slightly less often wrong than most people. I don't think an individual can achieve more than this except through simple good-fortune.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:47 AM on August 7, 2006

In my own experience I've found both conservatism and liberalism, broadly defined, to have bimodal distributions, with the current conservative peaks occuring at about 110 and 130, the liberalism peaking at 120 and then again at 140. At the low end of the spectrum I've not seen much easily characterizable patterns, and at the high end of the spectrum the only characterizable pattern is rapidlly declining interest in politics.

Continuing anecdotally, the folk theory is that: anyone with a marked self-aware political philosophy inevitably has placed some great stock in their own opinions, and by extension in considering themselves smarter, more correct, etc., than others.

With that in mind: liberalism broadly defined is (really: was, up until perhaps a decade ago) more or less unchallenged as the conventional wisdom of the day, and thus the opinions of the average college graduate (the 120 crowd) will default to liberalistic ideas. The mildly-more-intelligent 130 crowd is neither so blazingly smart as to obtain purchase to the first-class fruits of the mind -- they will prove no major theorems, develop no brilliant new analyses, and discover no new mechanisms -- nor so unreflective as to fall uncritically for the prevailing liberal dogma espoused by the averages with whom they share classrooms and majors. Thus cast out of heaven but unfit for hell the 130s still have a strong need to validate their own intelligence and often adopt the following strategy: find a few point of reasonable disagreement with some prevailing point of view, use their disagreement on those issues as a way to distinguish themselves from their 'peers' the 120s; eventually, their badge of distinction ossifies into an identity, as some-kind-of-conservative qua conservative.

As a byproduct of the 130 strategy, the 120s consider their newly-conservative 130ish classmate a troll -- after all, the conventional wisdom runs against the views 130 espouses -- and in the 130s the averages find a devil's advocate against whom they can develop an identity as liberals qua liberals; prior to that challenge they often had no conscious political identity, as they had simply absorbed the conventional wisdom of their day.

At the 140 level wide-angle critical reasoning seems developed enough to afford a deep-seated skepticism that makes the positions espoused by the simples beneath them seem simplistic, self-serving, and ill-considered; strong political affiliation has already begun declining at this point but of those with characterizable views liberal positions seem taken more frequently.

Above the 140 level other concerns predominate, political views are difficult to characterize if they exist, and so there's not much to go on. Below 120 the 110s are more easily swayed by para-logical rhetorical arguments currently popular with the right, and also have little invested in holding any particular views. Below 110 it seems that there's not much thought given to political views, and political affiliations are as much or more a product of chance or habit than of anything resembling careful introspection.

If I have restricted this analysis largely to the school years it is because, in my experience, most people's opinions are largely formed by the end of those years; in addition, self-segregation by viewpoint, vocation, and character helps reinforce those views formed in the 'formative years'.

---

As an interesting parallel I noticed the opposite phenomena back in the 60s: then the peaks were reversed, with the conservatives peaking at 120 and 140 and the liberals at 110 and 130. A lesson to be drawn from that early datapoint is that the distributions of political outlooks versus intelligence, at least in my own experience, are very much a product of the times, thus making it foolish to draw universal conclusions on this topic from present conditions.

Note: in this case the iqs are roughly figurative, with 120 the typical college graduate, 130s the typical smarter-than-average college graduate, 140+ people capable of nontrivially original thought, 110s being below average college graduates, and 100 and below being average and below.
posted by little miss manners at 10:42 AM on August 7, 2006

Have you ever met anyone really, really smart who went around saying "most people are stupid?" No you have not. It is the chant of the B+ student, the homily of the 115 IQs.

Actually, I have, in a manner of speaking. His name was Cyril Kornbluth. He was a science fiction writer of the 1950s, who died relatively young. His novelette, "The Marching Morons," takes this idea as its theme.

"The Marching Morons" is as much an indictment of the arrogant smart people as the morons, though. Their actions are utterly morally corrupt, and not in some Nietzsche/Objectivist "morality is different for smart people" way. Kornbluth's disgust with their behaviour and self-importance was pretty clear to me by the end of the story.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 11:03 AM on August 7, 2006

Little Miss I was with you... then you used words like "theorems", "para-logical" and "qua." I then started to drool and play with my own feces.

May I suggest you forget all that high-faloot'n think'n and sit down with Fox News and a nice PB&J. Without bannanas. Bannanas on PB&J are for stupid people.
posted by tkchrist at 11:15 AM on August 7, 2006

Sir, your use of the letter k in this word has at once suggested, argued, and proved to me that America is exactly equivalent to the Klan, and, furthermore, vaguely german-looking, and therefore a fascist rogue state run by Nazis.

Yes. Very good.
Corporatism Another Name For Fascism - Ask Mussolini
posted by chance at 12:01 PM on August 7, 2006

This isn’t an issue of intelligence, it’s one of perspective and controlling perspective. When we act in concert we do not pool our intellects, but our perspectives. Generally only a few people do the analysis, the rest are feeding or reiterating and adding to data. Whether you hunt, fight, or do improvisation, this is the general way humans work. People occasionally pass on analysis, but any analysis can be incomplete, ergo people more often pass on perspective based statements. Of course here (on Mefi) you have competing analysis and a variety attacks on perspective derived data.
But most people aren’t used to subjecting their perspectives to external feedback much less reorienting them, even to a (somewhat) neutral source like Mefi. And that’s the control element. Because we’re smarter and stronger when we act in concert most people associate positive feedback on their perspective as a state of well being. I tell you something, you add to it and tell it to me back, I reward you. In improvisation this is “yes, and”-ing, but it holds in any cooperative endeavor from hunting to combat to sports to politics. Typically it does better if it conforms to reality, but the less dire or immediate the situation, the less it needs to. And this can often override one’s own analysis for a number of reasons one of which for example might be because one is not privvy to the other perspectives. This isn’t a self-substantiating reason however. For example “national security” is often invoked to not share data, but is also used to limit the free flow of perspective, which is harmful. Granted it is possible to deduce certain details from a perspective, but it is always more harmful than any possible sharing of perspective can be (not data, perspective).
So what we have here (Iraq/WMDs) is a misrepresentation of perspective (based on improper use of data) being reiterated in order to surpress other perspectives. The data itself - something on which one could base an intelligent analysis on - is irrelevent to anyone plugged into that perspective. The idea is that we had to war on Iraq, because they possessed WMDs that represented an imminent threat to the United States akin to the attacks on 9/11. Bushco adopted this as their perspective, once they did, anyone reiterating that perspective was plugged to the sense of power and well being that came with the general and well-established idea of protecting the country. Hell, I know I did.
Now most people might have the data before them that says there weren’t WMDs or weren’t of the kind that posed an imminent threat, or whatever - but that’s irrelevent to the perspective of “doing something about protecting the country.” And people will do whatever it takes to support that perspective, regardless of the data, until such time that a more coherent perspective on “protection” replaces that one.
It’s a question of feedback, and association of perspective. Intellect is a form of manipulation (of environment, language, mathematics, etc. etc.) and people can be quite creative in manipulating their own perspectives and experiances to conform with and add to the greater one they are used to associating themselves with for that sense of well-being - despite any external success or external feedback.
So gas up over $5 a gallon might turn some heads, or it might not.
Certainly at some point one’s perspective has to have some parity with the feedback (from reality or whatever is breaking down the sense of well-being). But what is really disturbing is that at that point people will grab onto nearly any new perspective that promises to restore that sense of well-being.(Belabored point, but Hitler’s rise to power is a classic example)
And therein lies the real problem with intelligent manipulation of that human cooperative machine - not only does localized (equal and democratic) sharing of perspectives offer better feedback (on mefi for example you get non-hierarchal - and therefore usually more honest feedback) but forcing a perspective always ultimately loses hold of reality.
Which, might not get any attention at all. And in this case doesn’t seem to have. But people don’t need to pay much attention because they are cooperating (or participating in the ‘well-being’ perspective). Which, typically, is all that is needed. At any given point for example, only a few people in a baseball game are actually doing anything. The pitcher is pitching, the batter is batting, but your right fielder isn’t in the actual act of catching anything, so his focus is less than it would be were he actually participating. By the same token he’s involved, he’s cooperating in the game and the effort of his team to win. In the same way, Joe Sixpack is involved. He’s in the game, he’s paying taxes, doing what a citizen needs to do, but he’s typically not actively involved. The Republic we’re in by definition delegates that involvement to someone else so he can go about his business without having to make intelligent analyses every day. Certainly everyone can stand a bit more involvement in their government, but if everyone was involved the result would be a cacophony instead of the smoother - albeit subject to manipulation - delegation of consensus creation. Indeed, there seems to be some discouragement of participation through active analysis built into the system (even for the direct players - like congressmen).
The objective then, for individuals like ourselves who subject our opinions and perspectives to feedback from others, is to identify where the play is to be made and alter the game accordingly. We all have different foci, but if Iraq and the WMDs are yours then the objective would be to identify where the main consensus is wrong and focus your attention there. Much as a ball player catches or hits the ball and alters the course of a game. That’s where intelligence can make a difference, since I doubt any of us are coaches, managers or club owners (to stretch the baseball metaphor). Get enough ‘players’ hitting and catching well and you can alter the course of a season no matter what the club owners do. And they don’t need to act from a common perspective to act in concert, since they’re using the same reality based data instead of the same perspective.
Kinda meandered to the point there, but I hope that’s clear.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:01 PM on August 7, 2006

tkchrist writes "I know plenty of super smarty pantses in the 140's to 150's IQ range and 75% of every conversation is how stupid the rest of the planet is..."

Actually, I once was drinking with a group that was doing this. In fact, they were poking fun at Al Gore for having "only" a 150 IQ. One of the fun-pokers now holds a pretty high and pretty public position in Dubya's DOJ.
posted by orthogonality at 12:02 PM on August 7, 2006

tkchrist: I think I just dated myself; even para-science is now pseudoscience, so I suppose I should have said pseudo-logic, which would be more comprehensible. There's still the paranormal, I suppose, but para as a derogatory prefix seems to have lived out its days.
posted by little miss manners at 1:06 PM on August 7, 2006

Please use one syllable words.

Your hurting my thinkamus! It's swelling against my skullatorik bone.

[sound of drilling hole in skull]

Ahhhh. That's better.

Perhaps the smarter people are the better they can shut out the world and rationalize and fantasize. Hence: Iraq has WMD. And sweet beautiful democracy.
posted by tkchrist at 2:17 PM on August 7, 2006

little miss manners: you seem to have transposed sibling rivalry into the political arena, with "intelligence" replacing the ages of the respective siblings, who distinguish themselves from each other more for the point of making a distinction, than because that distinction has any inherent worth to them. In doing so, you seem to have discounted or ignored any differences in background. For example, how would you counter the finding that the main determining factor in somebody's political outlook is apparently that of their parents?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:46 PM on August 7, 2006

UbuRoivas: I'm not sure that I could --- the above is all only my own experience and observations, and not at all meant to be rigorous.

One could perhaps salvage the above theory by arguing that the above does account for people with strong political views, but it does not apply to people with political views but who do not take political thought very seriously, and that the latter population is more numerous...which might or might not be true, but it might be a way to salvage a half-baked theory.
posted by little miss manners at 7:04 PM on August 7, 2006

posted by b_thinky at 3:03 PM
The main reason there is a divide in America is because people look at the same evidence and reach different conclusions. To infer that one side has been tricked or is stupid is kind of ridiculous.

That's a bit of a postmodern conclusion.
There are facts and there are truths and the two are not the same.
The WMD argument is one of those where the facts just do not hold up. The WMD's that everyone from Clinton to Bush to Hannity originally claimed were there were not found.
From The Reporter

"The report basically contains no new information from one released in 2004 (the Duelfer report), which was a summary of the findings since the 2003 American Iraqi invasion of scattered, mostly non-functional munitions formerly filled -- or not -- with mustard gas or the nerve agent sarin.
The munitions were manufactured in the '80s, apparently for use in the Iran-Iraq War, not as part of any WMD program Saddam Hussein conducted during the '90s. They were not found as part of a single large cache, which might have indicated the presence of other caches; it was a few here, a few there. In fact, they were not even accessible to Saddam's military at the time of the American invasion."

So, this is not a matter of 'reaching different conclusions'. This is some Conservatives moving the goal post to fit their 'truth' and hoping others follow them.
posted by Rashomon at 3:45 PM on August 8, 2006