Did you know that you’re “independent of reality”?

It always amazes me when AP still pretends it’s a news outlet, rather than an anti-American propaganda machine. How’s this for an article:

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.

People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Maybe the reality is that Americans know (a) that Iraq probably shipped WMD’s to Syria in the long build-up to war the UN demanded, (b) that Iraq had situated itself with preliminary weapons systems that, in a heartbeat, it could transform into WMDS, and (c) that hundreds of weapons, all with devastating capacity, have in fact been located in Iraq, although the press seldom covers these findings. And that’s just off the top of my head. I guess it all depends on what your definition of WMDs is, and whether you care whether they’re actually found, or are just concerned (as I am) that they actually existed, or could imminently exist, with a megalomaniac’s hand on the trigger.

In other words, maybe half of Americans, rather than being delusional, are reading reports other than those emanating from AP, and actually have a more sophisticated grasp of reality than the blinkered MSM does.

Anyway, read the whole thing, and tell me whether it strikes you as a propaganda piece for the anti-War left, insulting American’s intelligence, or if it actually reads like a news story.

By the way, I’m still reading David Horowitz’s Radical Son, which makes it pretty clear that, on the Left, truth is a fluid concept if it interferes with the party line.

UPDATE: I wrote this post in something of a rush yesterday, in between household chores and work. I therefore didn’t bother to provide links supporting my reality. Here are a just few:

Russia tied to Iraq’s missing weapons

WMD shipments to Syria described

Syria storing Iraq’s WMDs

Post-invasion intel shows WMDs went to Syria

Sarin nerve gas found in Fallujah

500 Chemical weapon shells found in Iraq

Iraq was hiding chemical weapons facilities in 1999

Back story (about the hundreds of chemical weapons found in Iraq)

For those who believe my reality, please feel free to provide more links.

Since these stories don’t seem to inspire any excitement or belief amongst the anti-War crowd about the WMDs’ existence, I guess we really have to nail down what the heck kind of WMDs they were expecting to find or where precisely they were expecting to find them. Is enough Sarin to take down a city a WMD, or merely a conventional weapon on a chemical scale? Do chemical WMDs made in Iraq — and that Iraq could and would have used at any moment — count if Iraqis secretly and temporarily hid them in another country moments after we announced that such weapons existed? Does anyone care that Saddam Hussein has shown that, given the chance, he was at all times perfectly willing to use WMDs against those in his way?

UPDATE II: If you want the non-lazy version of my post, go to Flopping Aces, where Curt deconstructs myriad errors in AP’s purported news story.

UPDATE III:  American Thinker also has a detailed analysis explaining why Hanley’s conclusion is opinion, not news, and should not be promulgated as such.