Majority Believes US Acted on Incorrect Assumptions in Rush to War

The folks that revealed the Iraq war perception biases of consumers of different news sources a month or so back have a new study on the public's feelings looking back on the leadup to war. There are some very interesting numbers in here, but I'm only going to concentrate on one for now:

College Park, MD: According to a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll, a majority of Americans (55%) believe that the Bush administration went to war on the basis of incorrect assumptions. An overwhelming 87% said that, before the war, the Bush administration portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat, while a majority (58%) believes that the administration did not have evidence for this and only 42% believe that it was the case. A majority believes that the US went to war precipitously, with 61% saying that the US should have taken more time to find out if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and 59% saying it should have taken more time to build international support.

For those that are trying to pretend through tortured semantic games that the Administration wasn't selling Iraq as an imminent threat, there is only one response: 87%. The proof is in the pudding.

If you're interested in the whole study and the other findings, including the 77% who think we have to keep our forces in Iraq until a stable government is in place, it's available here.

[via Juan Cole]