"Average Joe"

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Wed Feb 19 20:40:34 PST 2003


On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 15:06:03 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> Fear of what? Car bombings in Athens, Ga.? Sarin at the strip mall? New Yorkers are the most likely targets in the U.S., and NYC isn't a > hotbed of prowar sentiment.
>
> Doug

No one said the fear was rational. Polls show that most Americans believe that there are links between Al Queda and Saddam. A large majority believe that at least some of the 911 hijackers were from Iraq.

(None were.) Either a majority or large minority believe that most of the 911 bombers were from Iraq. A majority believes that Iraq has nuclear weapons or is on the verge of acquiring them.

While polls don't show what follow, I suspect this is true as well: a majority believes that Saddam is a fundamentalist with hordes of fanatics ready to die for his jihad. (Saddam is a securlar and probably unpopular dictator.) A majority believes that Saddam committed most of his crimes ramdomly, that he is an unpredictable madman who acts against his own self-interest for the sheer joy of destruction. (Every crime he committed he either gained from or had reason to believe he would gain from.)

Given these beliefs, yes a great many ordinary Americans are terrified of Iraq. They have peen propagandized into believing Iraq is a threat to the U.S., rather than the other way around.



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