60% BELIEVE WE WERE MISLED ABOUT WMDs AND IRAQ LINKS TO AL QAEDA

A new Harris Poll finds a sharp increase in the proportion of adult Americans who believe that they were misled by the government's statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. A 60 percent majority now believes that "what we were told . . . was misleading," up from 51 percent in June. Just over a third (37%) still believes that what we were told was "generally accurate" but this is down from 44 percent in June. However, only a minority believes there was deliberate deception. Replies to five other questions about Iraq were generally very similar to those given in June, and on most of them, attitudes are still quite evenly balanced, with more or less equal numbers supportive of, and critical of, the government's positions. [more ]