Misinformed Americans

I like to think that on the whole Americans are a reasonably intelligent group of people. After all, this country has been in the forefront of most of the innovative ideas for many years.

My faith was shaken badly today by a poll out by the harris interactive polling assoc.
It asks a couple of basic questions that I thought most Americans knew the answer to:

"strong links to Al Qaeda."
-- Twenty-two percent (22%) of adults believe that Saddam Hussein "helped
plan and support the hijackers who attacked the United States on
September 11."
-- Twenty-six percent (26%) of adults believe that Iraq "had weapons of
mass destruction when the U.S. invaded."
-- Twenty-four percent (24%) of all adults believe that "several of the
hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11 were Iraqis."

Here's the link to the poll.

I don’t' really want to enter 2006 as depressed as I entered 2005, and I probably won't. These poll numbers however do give me pause. There has to be some turn around in the general populace if Democrats are to have a chance at retaking the house and winning more seats in the Senate. Don't you agree?