<p>FF, you make a good point. There will always be people who will go overboard, who will fall for the dramatic conspiracy theory, etc. But the question is, what tends to increase that, and what tends to militate against it? I think that’s a valid and important question to ask. A couple of notations regarding the different polls under discussion is interesting. Regarding the 9/11 conspiracy theory, interest in which peaked in 2006:
Even then, the percent of people who believe that explosives were planted in the WTC or that the Pentagon was actually hit by a cruise missile was only in the teens. But with the misperceptions about the Iraq war, and issues of plain fact, many more people were misinformed, and the more a person paid attention to Fox News the more likely they were to believe falsehoods:
That’s what’s interesting to me. I know you want to reject the results, and are just trying to figure out a way around this pretty compelling data, but wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to consider what causes it? The PIPA folks aren’t just a group who put on an ad hoc effort to make Fox look bad - they poll constantly around the world on lots of issues. The results don’t all support any one political philosophy or organization. It’s always tempting to blame the data when the results conflict with your pre-existing beliefs, but remember what B. F. Skinner said: “The rat is always right.”</p>
<p>"The PIPA folks aren’t just a group who put on an ad hoc effort to make Fox look bad - they poll constantly around the world on lots of issues. "</p>
<p>I would be more inclined to believe this if they hadn’t resorted to blatant lies and obfuscations in this study. Perhaps when they do worldwide opinion they take more care, but when they measure US politics their own bias gets the best of them.</p>
<p>I’d have to agree that the Bush Admin never specifically said that Hussein was tied to 9-11. They simply floated out the logic to be followed by repeatedly claiming that Iraq (Hussein) had a relationship with Al Qaeda, trained 'em, educated 'em, provided a safe haven for 'em and then Al-Qaeda carried out 9-11.</p>
<p>They failed to ever clarify that the Al-Qaeda terrorists were Saudis and, essentially sworn enemies of Iraq/Hussein and left the cloud of confusion that these Al-Qaeda operatives were tied to Iraq and therefore Iraq tied to 9-11.</p>
<p>This nebulous notion of Iraq/Al-Qaeda/9-11 was part of the propoganda of the Bush Admin in selling the war and the issues of WMD’s and the possibility of mushroom clouds in your neighborhood (per Condi Rice and Dick Cheney) then became a focus to make sure the country was good and scared and ready to rumble.</p>
<p>Certainly this was all further sold by Fox and is to this day.</p>