The Sept. 11 Commission found that there were no substantial ties between Hussein and al-Qaeda, and Charles Duelfer's report states that Iraq had no significant WMD program. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of supporters of the President take comfort in pretending that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and pretending that there were significant ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
In addition, the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes' survey also found that a majoroty of supporters of President Bush mistakenly believe that the President supports the Kyoto global-warming treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the treaty banning land mines, when he in fact opposes them.
A majority of Bush supporters also think that most of the people on the world hope the President is re-elected. This is not the case.
Steven Kull, program director, said that Bush supporters' "resistance to information" on several fronts reflected a powerful bond with the president formed after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the perception – shared by Kerry supporters – that Bush still asserts that Iraq had WMD.
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"To support the president and to accept that he took the United States to war based on mistaken assumptions is difficult to bear, especially in light of the continuing costs in terms of lives and money," Kull said.
"Apparently, to avoid this cognitive dissonance, Bush supporters suppress awareness of unsettling information."
A spokesman for the Bush campaign, Reed Dickens, said the perceptions on weapons were understandable "given that it's only in the last few weeks we've had this definitive finding" of the Duelfer report.
