Fox News tops source of voter misinformation

[GameOver22]

Kasz216 said:

Tigerlure said:

Kasz216 said:

GameOver22 said:

I can't say the results of the study surprise me much because voters are generally uniformed about political issues, but the level of misinformation is concerning. There is a difference between not knowing an answer and believing a wrong answer to be true.

The very first thing you learn when you take a research class is that people HATE saying "I don't know."

You could make up a question that his completly fictional like

"Did Alexander the Great say his favorite color was Red or Blue" and a great number of people will say either Red or Blue, even though such an event never occured.

Are you assuming that there is no "correct" answer in these questions asked?  And to your wired article, it says that they could be remnants of the gulf war, so that isn't good proof at all of WMDs found.

"But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained."

Does that justify the invasion of Iraq to you?

The finding of WMD's isn't proof of WMD's?  They found chemical weapons of mass destruction that according to the deals with the UN were supposed to be destroyed.  This is fairly similar to "Did the Stimulus save jobs."   Someone who thinks "It saved those jobs, but prevented new jobs from being created" very well may say no. 

Just as you are indicating you would say no, after directly reading something that says they found weapons of mass destruction.  Did they find weapons of mass destruction "no because they were old weapons of mass destruction."  I mean... what?

Does that justify the invasion of Iraq to me?  No, but they could of found a Nuclear program and that wouldn't of justified it, at best a Clinton age "Bomb the shit out of them until they let us do what they want" campaign would of sufficed.

 

Also, you miss my point.  Which is that if people don't know the answer to something, they are most likely going to guess.  (Furthermore said guess will play into their own biases.  People who like Red better will say that's his favorite color.)

Your link got me more intersted in this topic, so I did a little research. I personally don't think the question, "Were there WMDs in Iraq?", is a fair question without specifying what constitutes a WMD. By the dictionary definition, the wikileaks articles shows that WMDs were found, but by international or governmental standards, I'm not sure if these finding would constitue WMDs because it is unclear if the weapons had the ability to cause significant damage or mass casualties. In order to be a WMD, at least under some definitions, its not enough for something to be a chemical weapon. Weapons also needs to have the capability to cause significant damage. This relates to the quantity of the weapon, dispersal, as well as the ability to utilize the weapon.

http://www.nti.org/f_wmd411/f1a1.html