An interesting paper. I'm downloading it for later detailed reading.

There's just one question that occurs to me:

How do the authors of the paper decide what perceptions are "misperceptions" and which aren't? What are they using for their own sources to make these decisions? Fox News? NPR?

Yeah, I know. Some are obvious misperceptions, like "did Iraq use WMD against us during the war?" Others the jury is still out on, and depend largely on who you are listening to.

Look at this from the original paper:

The three key perception questions used were the ones that found the most egregious misperceptions, and to qualify as a misperception the most extreme form of the misperception was used. These were the
beliefs that:

● Evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found

● Weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq

● World public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq

The authors find these "egregious and extreme" misperceptions.

Look at the first one. Note that it says "links between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Now look at how your news story quote put it:

• There is clear evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

The Baltimore Sun twists it even further:

- Saddam Hussein has been directly linked with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

These are not identical statements with the original source, although it obviously suits some people to blur the distinctions ("You think Saddam supported terrorist groups? You must think he flew the airplanes into the towers!") Yet another media lie in the making, I suppose. It's getting hard to keep track.

In fact, I have seen quite a bit of information showing connections between Saddam and terrorist groups, including some linking Saddam to al Qaeda. It is not the slam-dunk the authors seem to think it is.

Have weapons of mass destruction been found in Iraq? Again, depends on who you listen to. Weapons ready to fire? Not yet. Weapon production items have probably been found. There were research biologicals found. They are looking for anthrax they know is there. And evidence that Iraq intended to pursue such weapons when the heat was off has certainly been found.

In fact, the only slam-dunk "egregious misperception" on that list is the item on world public opinion. And it's entirely possible that people were simply confusing the public opinion issue with the opinion of the governments of nations. A majority of European nations (18) did back our invasion of Iraq, including Britain, Poland, Denmark, Italy and Spain. To hear liberals talk, you'd think the only nations in Europe were France and Germany.

The point is the people who did the survey are bringing their own perceptions into it as well, right or wrong. Basically, since their primary assumption is that the NPR view is the "correct" perception, it is not surprising that the NPR listeners come out on top.

I do understand how attractive it is for NPR listeners to believe they are better and wiser than the rest of us ("cognitive abilities" my ass.) Of course, if many of the people at NPR had their way we'd have the same kind of government as Cuba does, so I don't know how bright this actually makes them.