half of americans still believe in WMD

amidst the claims that lamont's victory is somehow bad for democrats even tho 60+ percent of americans agree with his position on iraq, and the shameless political opportunism that foiled terrorist plots presents for this president, this one slipped by from earlier in the week (charles hanley for the AP):

Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"? Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?

Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq. [...]

"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.

how can we let this hopeless state of affairs go on? those old founding fathers knew...

"the liberties of a people never were, or ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." patrick henry

"An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.. . . The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe." thomas jefferson

"liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right . . . an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers." john adams

"Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe." abraham lincoln