Reporter Frank Davies Responds

I heard back from reporter Frank Davies, the author of the story referenced below. The original poll was conducted for Knight Ridder in January by Princeton Survey Research Associates. There are no direct links to the quoted study on their website, though. I found a story on Salon.com talking about this study.

"At the end of the first week of January, the Princeton Survey Research Associates polled more than 1,200 Americans on behalf of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain. They asked a very simple question: "To the best of your knowledge, how many of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens?"

"The Knight Ridder survey appears to reveal a quite different reality. Of those surveyed, only 17 percent knew the correct answer: that none of the hijackers were Iraqi. Forty-four percent of Americans believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqi; another 6 percent believe that one of the hijackers was a citizen of that most notorious node in the axis of evil. That leaves 33 percent who did not know enough to offer an answer."

My point is this: The American public has been willfully misled by the Bush Administration. I'm very frustrated at the fact that all this support for the war in Iraq comes from a lack of knowledge and false assumptions.

You want to know what the bitch of it is? If Herr Bush et al really invaded Iraq to remove a dictator for "humanitarian reasons", I probably would have supported the effort. But I don't trust Bush to be that altruistic; no conservative would be caught dead doing such a thing. The American public has been misled and even lied to. And nobody cares.

I guess it's true: In a Democracy, everyone gets what the majority deserves.