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54% of US believe in WMD
20/08/2004 14:33 - (SA)
Washington - More than half of Americans, 54%, continue to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a programme to develop them before the United States invaded last year, according to a poll released on Friday.
Evidence of such weapons has not been found.
Half believe Iraq was either closely linked with al-Qaeda before the war (35%) or was directly involved in the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks on this country (15%).
The poll by the Programme 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.
733 adults in the poll
President George W 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.
Both the September 11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee have raised doubts about pre-war claims by the Bush administration before the Iraq war.
Seven in 10 in the poll say they believe the United States went to war in Iraq based on false assumptions. A similar number say the war in Iraq has given the United States a worse image in the world.
A majority, 55%, say they don't think the war in Iraq will result in greater peace and stability in the Mideast. In various polls, people have been evenly split on whether the war in Iraq was the right or wrong thing to do - a sharp drop from last winter.
The poll of 733 adults was conducted by Knowledge Networks from August 5-11 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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