1/2 of Americans now believe that they were misled about WMD's in Iraq

Editor and Publisher reports that a recent Gallup poll found that 50% of Americans feel that the Bush administration misled them about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I'll go a step further, they didn't just mislead, they lied.

For instance, remember those aluminum tubes that the administration said were part of a nuclear arms program?

While a CIA report advocated the administration's view that the tubes were to be used for developing nuclear weapons, a set of technical experts from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos national laboratories reviewed the CIA analysis and disagreed with its findings. Independent investigations by the State Department's intelligence branch and the International Atomic Energy Agency also concluded that the tubes were unsuitable for uranium enrichment.

This information was presented to Secretary of State Colin Powell and others prior to their remarks on the topic. Yet Powell embraced the discredited CIA report and downplayed the collective scientific position, testifying that "Most U.S. experts think [the tubes] are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium."

- From Skeptical Inquirer Reports: policy, not science drives Bush administration