More than half of Americans, 54%, continue to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them before the United States invaded last year, according to a poll released Friday. Evidence of such weapons has not been found. Half believe Iraq was either closely linked with al-Qaeda before the war (35 percent) or was directly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on this country (15 percent). The poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found the numbers on both questions have dropped in the face of evidence that both pre-war claims may have been false. President Bush consistently equates the war on terrorism with the war in Iraq, though he has replaced his claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction with claims that Iraq had the "capability" of building such weapons. [more
] Pictured above:
An Iraqi worker turns a valve at an oilfield. World oil prices set new
records as hopes of an easing of tensions in Iraq faded and Iraqi
forces prepared for a new assault on the forces of Shiite militia
leader Moqtada Sadr . [more ]