Saturday, February 14, 2004

Headline writers

This headline, "Most Americans now say Bush lied over weapons", from this morning's Irish Independent is actually wrong. The truth is that 21% of people who were polled believe that the Bush Administration lied. 21% is not quite the same as "most Americans".

The article itself says "a majority of Americans now believe that President George Bush lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run up to war", which is true. It's equally true for me to say that 73% of Americans believe that the administration honestly believed that Iraq possessed WMDs, although that 73% includes 31% who believe the evidence was "intentionally exaggerated".