Who can we blame for this disturbing ignorance?
"Sizeable minorities of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had 'strong links to al Qaeda,' a Harris Interactive poll shows, though the number has fallen substantially this year.
"About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults."
Although these beliefs have declined in the last year, the mainstream media is still far too comfortable channelling Bush administration spin as "fact."
"Sizeable minorities of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had 'strong links to al Qaeda,' a Harris Interactive poll shows, though the number has fallen substantially this year.
"About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults."
Although these beliefs have declined in the last year, the mainstream media is still far too comfortable channelling Bush administration spin as "fact."
3 Comments:
This percentage represents the number I have always mantained will support Bush no matter what the bald facts are. Hence my term Bush usefools.
Peace
Smaller than the number of arabs and muslims who believe the Jews were involved in 9/11.
Exactly which american academics are stating that "Saddam Hussein had 'strong links to al Qaeda,'"
Arab Academics Still Claim 9/11 Was American Conspiracy
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
September 10, 2004
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Academics and others in the Arab and Muslim world continue to circulate conspiracy theories that blame the U.S. and/or Israel for the 2001 terrorist attacks on America.
At least 19 Islamic radicals linked to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden seized four U.S. planes and crashed them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11/2001.
Conspiracy theories surfaced almost immediately following the attacks and were repeated by Arab leaders from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef.
Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League condemned the theories as "a new spin on centuries-old allegations charging that Jews manipulate and control world events for their own benefit, and are willing to wreak havoc on the world in order to gain power," a report on the ADL website said.
But there are some moderate voices in the Arab world like Sheik Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of faculty of Shari'a at the University of Qatar, who have encouraged Muslims to engage in some soul-searching.
"Why won't we [Arabs] take the opportunity of the appearance of the September 11 commission's report to ponder why destructive violence and a culture of destruction have taken root in our society?" Al-Ansari wrote in the London based Arabic daily Al-Hayat on August 2.
"Why won't we take this opportunity to reconsider our educational system, our curricula, including the religious, media, and cultural discourse that cause our youth to live in a constant tension with the world?" he asked, according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
But others, including people in American allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have continued to propagate the conspiracy theories.
"To this day, we don't know who attacked the U.S. on September 11. Why is the attack attributed to bin Laden although it has not been proven that he was involved in the operation? It is way above his capabilities. Those who created him have made him a legend," Mustafa Shak'a, former dean of Humanities at Ein Shams University in Egypt said in an interview on Iqra TV in June.
"The operation was 100 percent American, and this is not the place to elaborate, but what proves the operation was a Jewish one is that five Jews climbed up a high building and filmed the first attack of the first plane," he said.
"There is still doubt that the September attacks were the outcome of Arab and Islamic terror. No conclusive proof to this effect is yet available," Galal Amin professor at the American University in Egypt wrote in Al-Ahram in April 2004.
"Many writers, American and European as well as Arab, suspect that the attacks were carried out by Americans, or with American assistance, or that Americans knew about them and kept silent. Such doubts are strong and rest on damning evidence, but the U.S. administration forcefully censors them and bans any discussion of the matter," Amin said.
In an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya in April, deputy editor Abd Al-Wahhab Adas accused the Jewish people of carrying out all terrorism worldwide, including the September 11 attacks.
Earlier this year, in a new song popular Egyptian singer Sha'ban Abd Al-Rahim accused the U.S. of bringing down the Twin Towers itself.
"Hey people it was only a tower and I swear by God that they [U.S.] are the ones who pulled it down," the song says. The song says the U.S. did so to make people think that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists so it can do what it wants in the Arab world.
In mid-August, Saudi Cleric Dr. Sa'd bin Abdallah Al-Breik that al Qaeda's role in 9/11 should not be exaggerated.
"We must not inflate [the importance] of al Qaeda, to the point of claiming that it is the main and only perpetrator of this large operation [September 11]," Al-Breik said.
"I'm not here to defend [al Qaeda], but we must not overstate this matter... It is a mistake to ignore the possibility that the Zionist [Israeli] hands used some people who were planted into one of the stages of this plan, from this issue," he said.
Al-Breik called such accusations "false" and said that Saudis must not rush to accuse and judge themselves according to "Zionist" dictates.
Meanwhile, on Thursday a top-ranking al Qaeda operative, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appeared on the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera satellite television threatening the U.S.
"[Americans] will no longer be safe while their government does not stop committing its crimes against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine," al-Zawahiri was quoted by wire reports as saying.
He predicted that the American defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan was "just a question of time, God-willing." Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian cleric, is considered bin Laden's right-hand man.
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