Last March, the White House put numerous Iraqi government documents online, hoping to "leverage the internet" to find evidence of Saddam's nuclear potential. After questioning from the New York Times this week, the site has now been shut down, as it has been revealed that the Bush administration, by publishing the information, may have publicly published detailed information on how to build atomic weapons. Right-wing bloggers, many of whom have been discussing the documents all year, have seen the sunny side of the news, claiming the real issue of the potential distribution of nuclear plans (which were dated pre-1991) is the "proof Saddam had a nuclear program."
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Nov 3, 2006 - 55 comments

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 on Aug 6, 2006 - 97 comments

WMDs? Sorry if this is double post or newsfilter, but fox news is claiming that WMDs were found in Iraq. Is it ethical to state as truth that which was been unconfirmed by anyone but one person? Depending on how this pans out, this could continue the shift of approval that started last week.
posted by klik99 on Jun 21, 2006 - 111 comments

Newsfilter: Rumsfeld squirms (via).
posted by bardic on May 4, 2006 - 104 comments

With admiration, Scooter Libby.
posted by digaman on Oct 7, 2005 - 40 comments

The Unfeeling President by E.L. Doctorow:
This president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
posted by Skygazer on Sep 27, 2004 - 36 comments

"Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction. It kills more people than terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing." So writes Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office and co-chair of the scientific assessment working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
posted by homunculus on Jul 28, 2003 - 24 comments

"Trailers of Mass destruction" : By Wolfowitz Productions, starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw. A red hot tale of sex, intrigue and death. (scroll to bottom of page). Amidst the controversy over Wolfowitz's admissions in a Vanity Fair interview about the use of Iraq's alleged WMD threat as a pretext for war, Hollywood comes to the rescue!
posted by troutfishing on Jun 3, 2003 - 20 comments

Did Bush know? An article in today's New York Times (link to mirrored site with no reg. req.) pieces together data that the author claims proves that Bush and his inner circle were well-aware that they were using false "evidence" of Iraqi WMD. Sy Hersh from the New Yorker is also chiming in, as is Salon's Joe Connason and Katha Pollitt of The Nation. A pretty decent subsection of media is finally descending on this story. If Bush or Powell or Rumsfeld are proven to have been knowingly deceitful, will the American public be even half as angry as the rest of the world?
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on May 6, 2003 - 59 comments

US threat to [wait for it..] stop Iraq inspections
Ri-iiiight. What was that about giving clear and determined leadership to the world? About the need for "Mr Saddam Hussein ... to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction"? That man is making a fool of his government, policies and his own people. What next?
posted by dash_slot- on Sep 19, 2002 - 98 comments