That does not surprise me at all. In my old country, the ruling elite always enjoyed over 95% support whatever they did. As they used to say in my old country, paper is very patient, it accepts everything. Manufacturing news is is the principal activity of news media no?
Of course, this is not just simple lie or even indoctrination. The work of government propaganda must be understood in the context of how human cognitive facluties operate under conditon of uncertainty. Of course, the best solution to uncertainty is to gather sufficient information to make a judgement (as say, rat choice folks want us to believe), but there is considerbale transaction cost of so doing, and the payoff amount to nil or even a negative quantity (if folks realized that their father or el presidentie had lied to them, they would have had diffciulties sleeping at night). So, they accept an explanation that is spoon fed to them by the government and th emedia, because there is no cost of getting this information, and it satisfies their hunder for information. It is like dining at McDonalds, it is crap, but it is easily available, relatively, cheap, known quality, and fills you up for a while.
It is also important that what is being spoon fed to the masses must be palapable (in case of McDonalds) or plausible (in case of propaganda). Plausiblity is achieved by scripting or inclucating people with cognitive schemata they will use (as Kantian apriori forms, if you will) to perceive and and interpret empircal information. This is the job or religion and light entertainment (sports, shows, movies etc.) which inculcate people with such schemata in the form of dermatic narrative, suchas the struggle between good and evil, good guys and bad guys, how the bad guys threaten th egood guys and how the good guys fight back to protect the innocents etc. Of course, most people watching these shows have no doubt that they show events that are fictional on their surface (i.e. specific persons in specific placea at specific times) - but they accept the realism of the show, which they belive "resembles" real life. The trick here is that the "resemblance" is a Trojan horse that smuggles a form of perceiving and interpreting reality (i.e. that life is a struggle between good and evil) and once subconsciously accepted, "confirms" itself by organizing people's perceptions into its own categories. It is like saying that water has a round shape, because containers that holds it are round. If all that people experience is water in round containers, they not only belive but ale "see with their onw eyes" that water is round.
Since most US-ers have little experience with narrative forms outside the entertainment industry or religion, they see reality exclusively through these forms - it is all about "bad guys threatening us" "good guys going after bad guys" "liberating people from a tyrant" "kicking ass" (as in sports) and so on. So if Bush or, for that matter, the media propaganda machine, gives information that perfectly fit that apriori schema, it appears plausible and people swallow it raw. Add to it the fact that it cost them nothing to get it, and on the top of it makes them feel good: they think they at last "understand" a complex reality, they also think that their governemnt is "taking care of the problem" so they can sleep peacefully, and they can identify with th epower that be and enjoy its spoils, only if vicariously. It is only a few malcontents like myself and other on this and similar list - who read books other than the bible and watched films other than those made in Hollywood - that see through thy ploy and feel bad about it.
Wojtek