A meaningless debate point on Iraqi WMD

The Washington Times reported on a recent Harris poll which asked American opinions regarding WMD in Iraq:

Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 -- up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds. Pollsters deemed the increase both "substantial" and "surprising" in light of persistent press reports to the contrary in recent years.
The survey did not speculate on what caused the shift in opinion, which supports President Bush's original rationale for going to war. Respondents were questioned in early July after the release of a Defense Department intelligence report that revealed coalition forces recovered 500 aging chemical weapons containing mustard or sarin gas nerve agents in Iraq.
"Filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist," said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, during a June 21 press conference detailing the newly declassified information.

All well and fine for scoring debate points on a reductionist question of "WMD or no WMD?", but it has little to do with why the USA went to war.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Iraq produced chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War, despite recent reports from media outlets and Republican lawmakers...
Pentagon officials told NBC News that the munitions are the same kind of ordnance the U.S. military has been gathering in Iraq for the past several years, and "not the WMD we were looking for when we went in this time."

No smoking gun. The pollster thus asked the wrong question. Whether the WMD were pre- or post-Gulf War is important. Being correct on an irrelevant technicality is not. It is flawed logic to conclude that the opinion poll either supports or does not support the U.S. administration rationale to go to war.

Politically partisan cognition as branding

With regard to politically partisan cognition, it's worth comparing emotional investment in commercial branding as a related phenomenon.

We are emotionally attached to the products we use regularly, so much so that we become defensive and tense when they are criticized, says a new study from the September issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. Interestingly, the more committed we are to a product – and thus the more incensed we are by any critique – the more counterarguments we are able to come up with.
"Less loyal individuals more readily agree with the unfavorable information and change their attitudes to be consistent with the new information," write Sekar Raju (University of Buffalo) and H. Rao Unnava (Ohio State University). "More loyal consumers question and argue against the information."

Given that emotional attachment can result in increased counterargumentation, it follows that political partisans would tend to counterargue rather than accept unfavorable information. It is therefore unsurprising that unpleasant facts may be hard for partisans to accept, at least initially.

A Shiite axis in the Middle East

Hezbollah in control in Lebanon, usurping the government.

Already the new fighting has deepened divisions in Lebanon, mostly along sectarian lines. The country's 1.2 million Shiites largely support Hezbollah, while Sunnis, Christians and Druse mostly oppose it.

The Mahdi Army patrols the streets in Iraq.

...the Mahdi Army's image as a defender of Shiites is largely responsible for its revival more than a year after American troops killed hundreds, if not thousands, of the black-clad fighters during two uprisings that al-Sadr led against the coalition in 2004.

The Shiite leadership in Iran goes without saying. Iran has a long history of providing rockets to Hezbollah. Increased lethality IED technology has apparently been transferred from Iran to Iraq.

Three of a kind.

Bomb blasts in India: echoes of al Qaida

As the news rolls in, currently over 160 have died from a series of bomb blasts on India's rail network. It appears the attacks meant to echo al Qaida's previous bombings. Multiple, near-simultaneous blasts. An attack involving transportation infrastructure. The 7th month echoes the London attack; the 11th day echoes the New York and Madrid attacks. It even appears they also targeted the financial sector.

Local reports said the bombs appeared to have targeted first-class compartments, as commuters were returning home from the city's financial district.

Suicide bombing and information processing deficit

Newman has a challenging alternate explanation for psychopathy, one which seems better able to model functional psychopaths.

The dominant scientific model asserts that psychopathic individuals are incapable of fear or other emotions, which in turn makes them indifferent to other people's feelings.
But Newman has a different idea entirely. He believes that psychopathy is essentially a type of learning disability or "informational processing deficit" that makes individuals oblivious to the implications of their actions when focused on tasks that promise instant reward. Being focused on a short-term goal, Newman suggests, makes psychopathic individuals incapable of detecting surrounding cues such as another person's discomfort or fear...
"People think (psychopaths) are just callous and without fear, but there is definitely something more going on," Newman says. "When emotions are their primary focus, we've seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal (emotional) response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely."

Given the example of the suicide bomber, it is quite plausible to posit that religious indoctrination, cultural priming, and social pressure could be applied to selectively induce an informational processing deficit, permitting a person to focus on the act of suicide bombing, becoming insensitive to other people's emotions and possibly their own. Idée fixe.