WORLD WAR III: Half the Country Still Thinks There's WMD -- What Kind of War Is This?

Image and perception. If it's indeed true that some kind of third World War has come to pass (the discussion is still very much open . . . ) these may be the two concepts that decide the winner and loser. Of course there will be fighting and of course there will be death, but few will argue that army battalions on a battlefield will constitute much--if any-- of this new war.

Then what are Americans doing manufacturing a false perception of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?

The story isn't too complex. It's nearly impossible to forget the case made for the war -- Saddam posed an immediate threat to the US and needed to be disarmed. "The smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," went the rhetoric. Only, as the war is now more than three years on, there are no WMDs. Bush has not only said as much, he's even joked about it.

Yet according to a new poll, half of the American public believes exactly the opposite.

The Associated Press article by Charles J. Hanley does a good job of pointing out that the Iraq Survey Group, setup by coalition forces in 2003 to "find, exploit, eliminate," really couldn't do that, because, Saddam just didn't have WMD. None. Dubious? Hardly, read the report.

(Mind you, the ISG was a $900 million project.)

We'll get into this more later, but the world has become a place of image and perception, not fact and reality. What does this mean? Can a delusional democracy flourish?

Can that kind of a democracy win a World War?