International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol.  No.

 © World Association for Public Opinion Research

; all rights reserved
doi:./ijpor/edh, available online at www.ijpor.oupjournals.org

LEADING THE PUBLIC TO WAR?

THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN
PUBLIC OPINION ON THE BUSH
ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION
TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ
Douglas C. Foyle

A B ST RA C T
This paper examines the influence of American public opinion towards Iraq on the
administration of George W. Bush from September ,  to the start of the war on
March , . It argues, first, that public opinion constrained policy choices in  by
requiring the administration to delay action against Iraq until it had dealt directly with al
Qaeda. With the main fighting in Afghanistan completed, the administration shifted its
approach. It attempted to persuade public opinion to support the use of force in Iraq,
principally by using references to weapons of mass destruction to prime public opinion.
Second, it suggests that the administration accurately perceived the dimensions of domestic
public opinion. And third, it shows that its leadership efforts did not dramatically change
public attitudes on the desirability of war although it did appear to affect public percep-
tions of whether the administration had ‘explained’ its position. It concludes that if the
administration successfully ‘led’ the public to war, it did so in large part because, after
September , the public favored such a war. Public opinion also caused the Congress to
support the Bush administration’s position. However, the emphasis on Iraq’s weapons of
mass destruction as the reason for going to war suggests potential long-term challenges
for the administration.

As the Bush administration moved the United States toward war with Iraq,
public opinion was a central aspect of its deliberations. Despite President George
W. Bush’s oft-repeated claim that he makes policy ‘based upon principle and not
polls and focus groups’, the administration focused closely on public opinion
throughout the period. This paper considers the place of public opinion in this
process in light of the literature on the public’s influence on foreign policy in the

The article was first submitted to IJPOR December , . The final version was completed in April .
The author thanks Laura Conley for her research assistance and the anonymous reviewers for their useful
comments and suggestions.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

United States. And it concludes that much of what the literature has to say about
the public’s role in the foreign policy process is supported by the decision on Iraq.

THE LITERATURE
While scholars now largely agree that policy makers rarely ignore public opinion
(Foyle, ; Holsti, ), the burgeoning literature on public opinion and for-
eign policy provides differing expectations on two aspects of the relationship.
First, on the question of the public’s influence, our understanding of this rela-
tionship in the United States has expanded dramatically in the last two decades
(Holsti, ; Powlick & Katz, ; Sobel, ). Scholars have now moved to
consider the influence of public opinion in non-American political contexts as
well (Everts & Isernia, ; Nacos, Shapiro, & Isernia, ).
The main debate centers on whether public opinion constrains policy makers
by limiting their policy choices, or whether officials are able to generate public
support for their policies and thus lead public opinion. Some scholars (Powlick,
; Russett, ; Sobel, ) have suggested that public opinion acts as a
broad restraint on foreign policy choices, especially choices involving war. In this
view, based in part on a growing sensitivity by policy makers after the Vietnam
War, while public opinion might not cause policy makers to choose a specific
policy, it forces certain policies to be ruled out. Other scholars contend that policy
makers lead the public by working to generate support for the policies they
themselves prefer. Policy makers might attempt to change public attitudes through
persuasion based on a policy’s actual merits. More disturbing, they might attempt
to create public support by fostering false perceptions about a situation or policy
(Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, –).
Where public opinion is ‘led’, the shifts might be more apparent than real. A
growing literature contends that the expansion of polling and the growth of public
relations (Eisinger, ; Heith, ; Shapiro & Jacobs, ) allow presidents
to describe their policies in a way that conveys a sense of responsiveness while
they actually pursue policies of their own; for example, by describing a conflict as
rooted in ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ in order to avoid intervention. Leaders ‘prime’
preexisting attitudes by ‘raising the priority and the weight that individuals
assign to particular attitudes already stored in their memories’ (Jacobs & Shapiro,
, p. ). To succeed, they need to get the media to ‘frame’ an issue for the
public by ‘selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making
connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation,
and/or solution’ (Entman, , p. ). Rather than shifting what the public
believes, these tactics seek to alter the criteria the public accesses in evaluating a
policy.
A second major concern of the literature is the process through which policy
makers form their impressions of public opinion. Recent work on the making of
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
domestic policy emphasizes how presidents employ modern polling and other
public opinion techniques (Eisinger, ; Heith, ; Murray & Howard, ).
In foreign policy, too, recent work has placed greater emphasis on how policy
makers think of public opinion (Foyle, ; Powlick & Katz, ; Sobel & Shiraev,
). However, far from being grounded in public attitudes, the perceptions of
policy makers often belie evidence from polls and resist reassessment when con-
fronted with information that contradicts their perceptions (Kull & Destler,
; Sobel & Shiraev, ).

ARGUMENT AND METHODOLOGY

This paper advances three arguments about the role of public opinion in
the decision of the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq. First, public opin-
ion constrained policy choices after September , , by requiring the
administration to postpone action against Iraq until it had dealt with al Qaeda
and Afghanistan. But it reinforced Bush’s determination to confront Iraq by
forcing him to consider what Americans would say in the future if he did noth-
ing at the time. Once the administration completed the main fighting in
Afghanistan and the general decision to confront Iraq (although not necessar-
ily to go to war) had been made in the fall of , it shifted its approach and
largely worked to lead public opinion and to prime public attitudes on Iraq—
mostly with reference to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)—around a con-
tinually narrowing range of policy options. During this period, public opinion’s
strongest influence was on Congress, which largely removed itself from the
process; Republicans fell in behind a popular Republican president while
Democrats calculated that they were better off supporting rather than chal-
lenging Bush. Second, throughout the period, the administration accurately
perceived the dimensions of domestic public opinion. Initially, the administra-
tion’s view of public opinion emerged from its perceptions of the opinion con-
text rather than from any evidence in the polls. Over time, the administration
came to rely more on expressed opinion as reflected in the polls. Third, despite
the administration’s clear understanding of public opinion, by and large, it did
not manage to change public attitudes on the desirability of war; September 
appears to have had the largest influence on public attitudes. What the admin-
istration did change were public perceptions of whether it had explained its
position.
Methodologically, the paper employs ‘process tracing’—a technique used by
historians—to examine the causal relationship between public opinion and
decision-making. The method focuses on how inputs become outputs by inten-
sively examining the decision-making process. Process tracing ‘attempts to
uncover what stimuli the actors attend to; the decision process that makes use of
these stimuli to arrive at decisions; the actual behavior that then occurs; the
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

effect of various institutional arrangements on attention, processing, and behav-

ior; and the effect of other variables of interest on attention, processing, and
behavior’ (George & McKeown, , p. ). From the manner and context in
which a construct like public opinion is used, inferences can be drawn as to its
influence (Khong, ).
Our analysis of evidence for the impact of public opinion on the minds of
decision makers is in three sections. In the first, the paper considers decision-
making from September  through to the State of the Union address about the
‘Axis of Evil’ on January , . During this period, Bush decided to act
against Saddam, and public opinion affected the foreign policy agenda and the
timing of American action. The second section considers actions from February
to November  when Bush sought military options to deal with Saddam,
sought international (UN Security Council) backing for the war, and worked to
develop domestic (public and Congressional) support for war, especially through
the June  speech at West Point. The third section covers the period from
November  to the beginning of the war on March , . This was the
most public phase of the march to war, with the administration seeking to increase
domestic support and maintain international backing.

S T A G E : T HE S E P T E M B E R  E F F E C T
The Bush administration wanted to do something about Iraq from the very start.
In late January , the National Security Council (NSC) tasked the State
Department to evaluate economic sanctions and the military to consider military
options against Iraq. In subsequent, sporadic deliberations the goal of removing
Saddam was unquestioned. Nonetheless, when September  arrived the admin-
istration was still developing its options (Suskind, , pp. –, –, ,
–). The September  attacks affected subsequent deliberations in two
ways. First, because it changed the public opinion context, it allowed the admin-
istration to push Iraq to the top of the foreign policy agenda and expand its options.
Second, because the public blamed al Qaeda mostly for the attacks, it limited the
possibility of immediate action against Iraq.
Nonetheless, while the public placed most responsibility for September  on
Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, it blamed Iraq in part. Thus, while  per-
cent of those interviewed on September , for a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll
believed ‘a great deal’ of the ‘blame’ for the September  attacks lay with Osama
bin Laden,  percent pointed to Afghanistan and  percent held ‘airport secur-
ity’ accountable,  percent nominated Iraq—putting it ahead of the Palestinians
( percent) and of Pakistan ( percent). Two days later, in a Wirthlin Quorum
Poll,  percent held Osama bin Laden ‘more responsible’ for September ,
with Hussein/Iraq being held ‘more responsible’ by just  percent. Nonetheless,
in the same poll  percent held Hussein/Iraq ‘second most responsible’. Asked
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
on September , , about ‘how important a goal’ various targets of military
action should be, respondents in a Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll pointed to
terrorism first; but Iraq, too, was a significant target. Thus,  percent saw
‘destroying terrorist operations in Afghanistan’ as ‘very important’,  percent
saw the ‘capturing or killing Osama bin Laden’, and  percent saw the ‘destroying’
of ‘terrorist operations outside of Afghanistan’, as very important; but ‘removing
Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq’, was nominated by no fewer than  percent.
Most importantly, September  fundamentally changed public attitudes
about what to do with Iraq. It caused a dramatic upsurge, from  to  percent,
in support for the use of American troops to remove Saddam (Figure ). The
public also appears to have increased its willingness to accept casualties. Although
variations in the wording of questions make comparisons difficult, while less than
a third of respondents in  favored attacking Iraq, and nearly two-thirds
were opposed, if ‘substantial U.S. military casualties’ occurred, that figure was all
but reversed when a similarly worded question was asked in early  (Figure ).
The administration’s view of the political and foreign policy context of Iraq
policy also shifted. Bush feared public reaction if he did not act and Saddam was
later implicated in some future attack against the United States: ‘I don’t want
history to look back and say, “Where was President Bush? . . . How come he
didn’t act on behalf of the security of the American people?” ’ (quoted in Diamond
et al., ). After September , the October anthrax attacks and the November
discovery in Afghanistan of attempts by al Qaeda to acquire WMD, one White

a
Gallup Organization. ‘Would you favor or oppose sending American troops back to the Persian Gulf in order
to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?’
b
Pew Research Center. ‘Would you favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s
rule?’ January  only, preceded by ‘As part of the U.S. (United States) war on terrorism . . . ’
Note: Missing to  percent: No opinion, don’t know, refused.
FIGURE  Support for use of American troops against Iraq
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

a
Gallup Organization. ‘Would you favor or oppose taking military action to force Saddam Hussein from
power if it would result in substantial U.S. military casualties?’
b
Pew Research Center. ‘Would you favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s
rule, even if it meant that U.S. might suffer thousands of casualties?’ January  only, preceded by ‘As part
of the U.S. war on terrorism . . . ’
c
CBS/New York Times. ‘Suppose U.S. military action in Iraq would result in substantial U.S. military casualties,
then would you favor or oppose the United States taking military action against Iraq?’
Note: Missing to  percent: No opinion, don’t know.
FIGURE  Support for use of force even if significant American casualties

House official noted that ‘Iraq was the easiest place [terrorists] could get
[WMD]’. Bush, one senior official recalled, had a ‘eureka moment’ when he real-
ized that ‘were a WMD to fall into [terrorists’] hands, their willingness to use it
would be unquestioned. So we must act pre-emptively to ensure that those who
have that capability aren’t allowed to proliferate it’ (quoted in Elliott & Carney,
). Clearly, September  changed Bush’s perception of the context through
which Hussein would be viewed. At the same time, senior officials correctly saw
September  as a ‘transformative moment’ which increased the public’s willing-
ness to accept military casualties as well as preemptive action (quoted in Lemann,
; Page, ).
Public opinion also affected the foreign policy agenda and the timing of American
action. Now long-time conservative proponents of action against Iraq could
argue that Saddam should be priority number one. Senior administration
officials had been reviewing Iraq policy since the beginning of the administration.
September  solidified the debate. As National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice noted, ‘What September  did was to vivify what happened if evil people
decide that they’re going to go after you, and that it doesn’t take much’ (quoted
in Page, ). One senior official recalled that, ‘Without September , we never
would have been able to put Iraq at the top of our agenda. . . . It was only then
that this president was willing to worry about the unthinkable—that the next
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
attack could be with weapons of mass destruction supplied by Saddam Hussein’
(quoted in Weisman, ).
But while September  would move Iraq to the top of the foreign policy
agenda, public opinion caused Bush to put Iraq off until another day. Although
Bush, in his September  retaliation statement, targeted both terrorists and the
states that harbor them, which clearly included Iraq (Tanehaus, , p. ), he
would soon suspend talk of dealing with Iraq in the immediate future. While
some members of the administration (notably Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and Vice President Richard Cheney) pressed at an NSC meeting, on
September , for a broad international coalition against both al Qaeda and state
sponsors of terrorism, Bush thought it would be easier to start with al Qaeda
alone in large part because of American public opinion. ‘Bush worried about
making their initial target too diffuse’, Bob Woodward concludes from his inter-
views with those who attended the meeting. ‘Let’s not make the target so broad
that it misses the point and fails to draw support from normal Americans’, he
writes, paraphrasing Bush. ‘What Americans were feeling’, Bush added, ‘was
that the country had suffered at the hands of al Qaeda’ (Woodward, , p. ).
While all agreed that Iraq would need to be part of any full-scale war on terror-
ism, Rumsfeld suggested they include Iraq in the initial military retaliation. Sec-
retary of State Colin Powell disagreed. He argued that ‘Any action needs public
support. It’s not just what the international coalition supports; it’s what the
American people want to support. The American people want us to do some-
thing about al Qaeda’. Bush believed he needed to convince the public that the
war on terrorism would be a long struggle consisting of a series of actions.
Rejecting a one-shot reaction, which he disparaged as ‘a photo-op war’, Bush
acknowledged he needed to lead the public: ‘The American people want a big
bang. . . . I have to convince them that this is a war that will be fought with many
steps’ (quoted in Woodward, , p. ; see also Clarke, , pp. – and
Suskind, , p. ).
After a further meeting of the NSC, on the morning of September , to decide
the initial American action, Bush ended near-term consideration of Iraq. But he
appears to have decided that Iraq represented the second step after Afghanistan.
In the morning session, while Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and
Rumsfeld suggested going after Iraq, Powell again disagreed fearing that the
international coalition would dissolve if they went beyond Afghanistan. While
Bush listened, he ended the administration’s consideration of action against Iraq
that day. Bush recalled two reasons for his decision to focus on Afghanistan.
First, ‘my theory is you’ve got to do something and do it well and that . . . if we
could prove that we could be successful in [the Afghanistan] theater, then the
rest of the task would be easier’. No doubt with American public opinion par-
tially in mind, he concluded ‘the lack of focus [from multiple missions] would
have been a huge risk’ (quoted in Woodward, , pp. –). He had told Rice,
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

the next day, that ‘we won’t do Iraq now. We’re putting Iraq off. But eventually
we’ll have to return to this question’ (quoted in Woodward, , p. ). At the
 hearings on the September  attacks, Powell () recalled that at this
meeting ‘where the president came down was that Afghanistan was the place
that we had to attack because the world and the American people would not
understand if we didn’t go after the source of the / terrorists’. Bush’s con-
cern had more to do with ‘timing and tactics’, in Wolfowitz’s words; in terms of
‘strategy and what the large goal was’, Bush favored going after Iraq eventually
(Tanehaus, , p. ; see also Clarke, , p. ). At the September  NSC
meeting, Bush set down this view firmly: ‘I believe Iraq was involved [with
September ], but I’m not going to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence
at this point’. While planning for war against Iraq could continue, the immediate
goal was to attack Afghanistan (quoted in Woodward, , p. ; see also Powell,
; Rice, ; and Suskind, , pp. –). Despite Richard Clarke’s
insistence that al Qaeda was the culprit, Bush reportedly pressed Clarke, his
NSC terrorism expert, to ‘see if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way’
(Clarke, , p. ).
Bush left Iraq out of the initial calls for action. In preparing for Bush’s
September  speech to Congress, where he would say that September  was
perpetrated by terrorists with global reach, one senior official recalled the presi-
dent deciding ‘it would be too much, it would be too much at the moment for our
country’ to target Iraq. ‘We were nine days after this terrible attack. There would
be time, later, to prepare a case against Iraq’. Bush informed his advisers he
would do ‘first things first’ (quoted in Page, ). Nonetheless, senior adminis-
tration officials would later acknowledge, Bush had decided to go after Iraq.
‘September  gave him a never-again sense. He never wants to stand again
before another pile of rubble. He’ll err on the side of being overly vigilant’
(quoted in Milbank, ). Bush recalled that after September  ‘all [Saddam’s]
terrible features became much more threatening. Keeping Saddam in a box
looked less and less feasible to me’ (quoted in Woodward, , p. ).
In the fall, a decision ‘emerged’ to target Saddam. ‘There wasn’t a flash moment.
There’s no decision meeting’, Rice recalled. Another senior administration
official suggested it was ‘policymaking by osmosis’ and the policy ‘kind of
evolved, but it’s not clear and neat’ (quoted in Page, ). With the war in
Afghanistan going well, the goal of ousting Hussein became policy. On Novem-
ber , Bush ordered the Defense Department to develop plans for invading
Iraq. But because he feared ‘enormous international angst and domestic specula-
tion’ if it became public, the planning was to be done secretly (quoted in Wood-
ward, , p. ).
Driven by September  and its assessment of national security interests, the
administration’s goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power had been set.
September  shifted the domestic context sufficiently for the administration to
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
contemplate military action against Iraq. Fears of a negative public reaction,
even years later, to an Iraqi-sponsored September -like event reinforced the
administration’s inclinations toward dealing with Iraq. But public reaction to
September  constrained the administration: it had to deal with the perpetrators
first. Bush believed he had yet to convince the public that Saddam should be
ousted and that strong American action, including war, would provide an accept-
able means to achieve this goal.

ST AG E  : M E A N S T O A N E ND — P UB L I C O P I NI O N ,
C O NG R E S S , AN D T HE U N I T E D N A T I O NS
SIGNALING INTENT
Going into the new year, the administration believed that, while it did not have
full public support for war yet, it would not face significant hurdles in achiev-
ing it. Planning to confront Iraq seemed to merge, in the winter and spring of
, with the development of a new national strategy document in response to
September  (Lemann, ). The Director of Policy Planning at the State
Department, Richard Haass, presaged the eventual national strategy in early
 when he speculated that the strategy might declare that states ‘have the
right to intervene’, even preemptively or preventively, if a nation supported ter-
rorism. Thinking of Iraq, he added: ‘I don’t think the American public needs a
lot of persuading about the evil that is Saddam Hussein. . . . Also, I’d fully expect
the President and his chief lieutenants to make the case. Public opinion can be
changed. We’d be able to make the case that this isn’t a discretionary action but
one done in self-defense’ (quoted in Lemann, ). Polling, from early January,
suggests that the administration, in some ways, underestimated the amount of
support they had for war (see Figures  and ).
The most significant early announcement of the action planned against Iraq
came in Bush’s State of the Union Address, January , . What Bush sought
was language that would draw the connection between September  and Saddam
Hussein and make clear the need to move beyond a policy of containing Saddam
to one of removing him. Speechwriter David Frum suggested that Iraq be linked
in an ‘axis of hatred’ with North Korea and Iran. By connecting terrorism, terrorist
states, and WMD, Bush hoped to transform the war on terror from an act against
a specific actor into a war that confronted a range of actors (Frum, ).
The speech began to communicate these decisions. Referring to the ‘axis of
evil’, Bush warned: ‘we will be deliberate yet time is not on our side. I will not wait
on events, while dangers gather’. Though a senior official cautioned ‘not to read
anything into any [country] name in terms of the next phase’, Bush laid down a
marker: the United States would ‘prevent regimes that sponsor terror from
threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction’.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

The language on Iraq matched the criteria for action: ‘Iraq continues to flaunt its
hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to
develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade’ (quoted in
DeYoung, a). Support for action against Iraq remained high. A Quinnipiac
University Poll, taken after the speech, on February , found  percent in
favor of ‘having United States forces take military action against Iraq to force
Saddam Hussein from power’; only  percent were opposed.
Bush began to tell both members of Congress and the press that he had made up
his mind: Saddam needed to go. In March, Bush dropped in on a meeting between
Rice and three senators to tell them, ‘F— Saddam. We’re taking him out’ (quoted in
Elliott & Carney, ). On April , he told British journalists that ‘I made up my
mind that Saddam needs to go. That’s about all I’m willing to share with you’
(quoted in Page, ). On June , at West Point, Bush formally announced a pol-
icy of preemption: ‘We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and
confront the worst threats before they emerge. . . . If we wait for threats to fully
materialize, we will have waited too long’. While a senior official acknowledged that
the administration had yet to convince the international community to act
against Iraq, the USA planned to do so by ‘rally[ing] the world to an understand-
ing of these threats and these dangers’ (quoted in Allen & DeYoung, ).
By late summer, with a large proportion of the public wanting congressional
and UN authorization of any military action, both the Congress and the UN
became more important in the administration’s plans. An ABC News/Washington
Post poll, conducted August , reported that  percent agreed that Bush
‘should get authorization from Congress before launching an attack’ if ‘Bush
decides to go to war with Iraq’; no more than  percent disagreed. In a Gallup/
CNN/USA Today poll, taken September ,  percent thought it ‘necessary for
the Bush administration to get a resolution of support from the United Nations
before it attacks Iraq’; only  percent said it was not.
By August, after a series of meetings to resolve a range of issues, it was agreed
that the policy would be announced soon after Labor Day: ‘From a marketing
point of view’, said White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Jr., ‘you don’t
introduce new products in August’ (quoted in Bumiller, a; see also Daalder
& Lindsey, , pp. –; Lemann, ). Still, differences remained. Some,
like Cheney and Rumsfeld, pushed for military action, even without interna-
tional support. Others, like Powell, argued for going slow and for getting inter-
national support (Ricks, ). Powell suggested a new approach: and he sold it
to Bush as necessary for both military success and public support.

B RINGING IN THE UNITED N ATIONS

On August , Powell had dinner with Rice and Bush to lay out the case for a
multilateral approach, preferably involving the UN. After a week of high level
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
meetings, Bush agreed that his September  speech to the UN would be about
Iraq; the tone would be such that it would provide a real opportunity for the UN
to act (Woodward, , pp. –). By framing the issue as Saddam against the
international community, the administration hoped to recast its case. Cheney
conceded the value of the option, saying it ‘would be a strong argument: it’s not
really the administration’s problem, it’s the U.N.’s problem’ (quoted in Lipper,
).
The shift to the UN occurred in the course of a debate within the administra-
tion over how to sell the policy on Iraq to the public, and public criticisms from
Republicans in Congress and former officials in the administration of George
H. W. Bush. Publicly, the president acknowledged the criticism but indicated
that it would not influence him. On August , he noted ‘it’s a healthy debate for
people to express their opinion. . . . But America needs to know, I’ll be making up
my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own
country plus our friends and allies’ (quoted in Bumiller, b).
To support their respective policy positions, administration officials framed
the issue in ways they thought best designed to win the public’s backing. Powell
and the State Department, favoring slower, multilateral action, emphasized the
costs of intervention. One State Department official argued, in mid-August, that
if more attention were given to the post-Saddam environment ‘that would start
broaching the question of what kind of assistance you are going to need from the
international community to assure this structure endures—read between the
lines, how long the occupation will have to be’, which would potentially slow
the pace toward war (quoted in Purdum & Tyler, ). By contrast, unilateral-
ists like Cheney emphasized the threat embodied by Iraq’s nuclear weapons; on
August , in a widely publicized speech, he claimed there was ‘no doubt’
Saddam possessed WMD, that ‘time is not on our side’, and that ‘the risks of
inaction are far greater than the risk of action’ (quoted in Milbank, ). Bush
and Cheney believed that the multilateral support Powell favored would only
emerge once the UN believed the USA would act unilaterally (Elliott & Carney,
).

A PUBLIC R ELATIONS O FFENSIVE AND THE SECURING

OF C ONGRESSIONAL B ACKING

In early September, armed with a military plan that he found acceptable (Woodward,
a), Bush believed that legally he could go to war (Diamond et al., ). But
the politics of acting unilaterally, without further authorization from Congress,
were another matter. With his advisers reporting that he prioritized two poten-
tially interrelated goals—ousting Saddam and being reelected—the first potentially
more important than the second (Maddox, ), the administration embarked
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

on an integrated public relations effort to bring on board the American public,

the UN, and Congress.
The  presidential election contextualized deliberations. In early August,
Powell had warned Bush that movement on Iraq was ‘going to suck the oxygen out
of everything. This will become the first term’ (quoted in Woodward, ,
p. ). On the other hand, Bush saw uncertainty about a war hindering economic
growth: ‘until we get rid of Saddam Hussein, we won’t get rid of uncertainty’
(quoted in Suskind, , pp. –; see also Woodward, , p. ). Bush later
recalled that he was willing to risk his reelection: ‘I was going to act. And if it could
cost the presidency, I fully realized that’ (quoted in Woodward, , p. ).
By early September, the administration’s ‘message’ was in disarray. With
Powell declaring that the administration would go to the UN and Cheney argu-
ing a unilateralist position, Republican congressional leaders were beginning to
raise questions. Senate Minority leader Trent Lott commented, ‘I do think that
we’re going to have to get a more coherent message together and make sure the
American people understand the threat’ (quoted in Elliott & Carney, ).
At the same time, both the Congress and the public wanted to know why Iraq
had to be confronted and why the old policy of containing Saddam could not be
continued. Polling conducted in September found that few Americans thought
the administration had explained its policy (Figure ).

a
CBS News/New York Times. ‘Do you think the Bush administration has clearly explained the United States
position with regard to possibly attacking Iraq?’
b
Pew Research Center: ‘Do you think George W. Bush has explained clearly what’s at stake as to why the U.S.
(United States) might use military force (in Iraq) to end the rule of Saddam Hussein?’.
c
Pew Research Center: ‘Do you think Colin Powell has explained clearly what’s at stake as to why the U.S.
(United States) might use military force (in Iraq) to end the rule of Saddam Hussein’ or not.
Note: Missing to  percent: Don’t know, refused.
FIGURE  Whether the Bush administration has explained its policy in Iraq
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
As we have argued, the problem for the administration was that what had driven
Iraq to the top of its agenda was September  rather than any new information
on Iraq’s WMD capabilities, its links to terrorism, or its intentions. When Senate
Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin pressed Bush to maintain the
containment policy, Bush replied (in an aide’s paraphrase), ‘That’s not an option
after /’ (quoted in Tumulty, ). Yet Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill,
who saw all the intelligence reports in this period, reported no evidence linking
Iraq to al Qaeda (Suskind, , p. ). Richard Clarke (, p. ), also found
no evidence connecting Iraq to terrorist acts between  and  including
the September  attacks. While most experts believed Iraq possessed chemical
and biological weapons, an internal Central Intelligence Agency analysis found
no hard evidence to prove Iraq possessed WMD after  when inspectors left
Iraq. Rumsfeld later acknowledged as much, saying that the government ‘did
not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pur-
suit of weapons of mass murder. We acted because we saw the existing evid-
ence in a new light’ after September  (quoted in Daalder & Lindsey, , p.
). Intelligence officials also indicated that an extensive internal review of ten
years worth of intelligence on Iraq found ‘nothing huge. No smoking gun’
(quoted in Lipper, ). This situation placed a premium on efforts to sell the
policy rather than revealing new ‘proof’ of WMD or terrorist links. Officials
indicated that instead of providing dramatic information of an imminent
threat, the public relations campaign would release newly declassified informa-
tion on known events (such as pictures of past Iraqi atrocities) to create what
one official called ‘several Cuban-missile-crisis moments’ (quoted in Lipper,
).
The administration apparently decided to stomach the perception of disarray
and criticism over the summer and to launch the campaign to capture the pub-
lic’s attention around September , . ‘Everybody felt that was a moment’,
said Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove, ‘that Americans wanted to hear from
[Bush]’ and the point ‘to seize the moment to make clear what lies ahead’
(quoted in Bumiller, a). In his September  speech to the UN, Bush called
for Iraq to comply with previous UN resolutions on disarmament and declared,
‘We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions’.
However, regime change remained the goal. The rhetorical emphasis on the UN
and disarmament was a temporary shift designed to achieve UN and congres-
sional support (DeYoung, b; Diamond et al., ). Bush later recalled that
the speech would ‘clarify [the situation] to the American people’ and ‘define the
agenda’ (quoted in Woodward, , p. ).
The speech’s multilateralist tone initially bolstered support from the Repub-
licans in Congress and from the Democrats who were no longer able to criticize
the administration as unilateralist; all sides now expected the Congress to sup-
port any resolution for action against Iraq (Mitchell, ). The speech also
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

had a positive effect on the public with a sharp increase in the proportion that
believed that the administration had explained its policy (Figure ).
Given the uncertainties of future UN action, the administration decided to
focus on a resolution of support from the Congress. Cheney reasoned that Con-
gress would hesitate to vote against a resolution on Saddam in an election year.
Rice, who thought Democrats were likely to support the move, argued that it
would give the administration leverage when it returned to the UN (Woodward,
, p. ). On September , Bush sent Congress a resolution authorizing the
use of force to disarm Iraq based on the notion of ‘anticipatory self-defense’;
there was no specific reference to regime change (Purdum & Bumiller, ).
The issue immediately became involved in calculations concerning the forth-
coming congressional elections. Democrats charged that Bush’s call for a vote
before the elections was an attempt to drive domestic issues out of the election
and move the focus of the campaign to more politically advantageous foreign
policy issues. Republicans countered that Democrats were the ones making Iraq
a political issue rather than seeing it as a matter purely of national security
(Walsh, Omestad, Mazzetti, & Whitelaw, ). Bush also pushed Congress to
act before the passage of any UN resolution claiming, ‘I can’t imagine an elected
member of the United States Senate or House of Representatives saying, “I
think I’m going to wait for the United Nations to make a decision.” ’ Powell told
one wavering Senator that ‘unless Congress passes the authorization for use of
force, the Security Council will find a way to sidestep the issue’ (quoted in
Woodward, , p. ). At the same time, a White House official emphasized
that the UN and its inspectors were only a means to the end of regime change.
‘Don’t focus on inspections’, said the official; ‘it is not our focus’ (quoted in
Hirsh, ).
For its part, the public seemed to side with those prepared to vote in favor of
a resolution. A Gallup Poll, taken on September , found that  percent of those
polled thought Congress should ‘pass a resolution to support sending American
ground troops to the Persian Gulf in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from
power in Iraq’;  percent disagreed. When asked in a ABC News/Washington
Post poll, on September , about their reaction to a representative who voted
‘against a resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq’,  percent said it would
make them more likely to vote for reelecting their representative,  percent said
it would make them less likely, and  percent said it would make no difference.
As events transpired, the administration, congressional Republicans (who
largely followed the administration’s lead), and congressional Democrats viewed
the resolution vote from a strategic electoral perspective. A memorandum from
Democratic strategists James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Robert Shrum
that argued that ‘the debate and vote on the resolution will bring closure on the
extended Iraq debate that has crowded out the country’s domestic agenda as
Congress concludes’ influenced Democrats. Their polling, the consultants believed,
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
showed that Democrats could frame either support or opposition to the resolu-
tion in a manner that did not damage them and that allowed ‘the election to move
to domestic issues’ where the Republicans were vulnerable (Greenberg, Carville,
& Shrum, ). Democratic congressional leaders took this advice. As Demo-
cratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said, ‘the bottom line is, we want to
move on’ (Daschle, ).
This calculation was bolstered by an October – poll, produced by the Pew
Research Center for the People & the Press (), that found that while Iraq
‘emerged as the national issue that people discuss most often with family and
friends’, it was ‘the economy and other domestic issues—not Iraq or terrorism—
that voters most want to hear about in their states and districts’. Other polls con-
firmed that Iraq was distracting the public from domestic issues. One CNN/USA
Today poll asked respondents ‘about which of the following issues will be more
important to your vote’ at ‘the  elections for Congress’. On August , 
percent said war with Iraq and  percent said the economy. By September ,
 percent said war while  percent said the economy (Samuel, Walsh,
Mazzetti, & Levine, ).
The administration spent the early part of October pressing Congress to sup-
port the resolution. Its efforts were capped, on October , by a televised speech
from Bush in which he insisted that ‘confronting the threat posed by Iraq is cru-
cial to winning the war on terror’ and that failure to act would be ‘the riskiest of
all options’. While the speech stressed the dangers from Iraqi WMD and the need
for disarmament, it emphasized the means to that end lay with regime change.
Doubting that Iraq would change its policy on disarmament, Bush declared:
‘that’s why two administrations—mine and President Clinton’s—have stated
that regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger
to our nation’ (Bush, ). Importantly, the administration conceded that the
Congress was but one step in its overall campaign to generate support for its pol-
icy. As one White House official explained, ‘The strategy is to use the Congress
as leverage, leverage to bring around the public, and leverage to make it clear to
the U.N. that it’s not only George Bush who is prepared to draw the line in the
sand, it’s the whole country’ (quoted in Mitchell & Hulse, ; Sanger, ).
The strategy in relation to the Congress succeeded. In August, the Congress
had seemed divided. But Bush’s September  speech to the UN, the adminis-
tration’s decision to frame the Congressional vote as a continuation of the widely-
supported  resolution calling for Iraqi regime change, and the argument that
the USA was part of a multilateral effort to confront Iraqi WMD (Sanger, ),
paid off. The House voted – in favor of the resolution on October , and
the Senate concurred – on October . Republicans gave overwhelming
support for the president: : in the House, : in the Senate. Democrats
split their votes: : against in the House, : in favor in the Senate (‘Ana-
lyzing the war votes’, ).
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

These results, at least in part, reflected divisions in the public. In early October,
Pew reported that the Republicans it polled overwhelmingly supported military
action,  percent to  percent, while Democrats (in favor  percent to  per-
cent) were divided by ideology: conservative and moderate Democrats favored
military action,  percent to  percent; but liberal Democrats were opposed, 
percent to  percent (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, ).
Electoral calculations seemed important as well. At the time of the vote, poli-
tically vulnerable incumbents— House members and  senators, according to
CQ Weekly, faced potentially competitive contests—seemed particularly likely to
vote in favor of the resolution with  percent of vulnerable House incumbents
(compared to  percent of the House as a whole) and  percent of vulnerable
senators (compared to  percent of the Senate as a whole) voting in favor of the
resolution. Of the House Democrats facing close races,  percent voted in favor of
the resolution; of the general Democratic House caucus,  percent voted against
it. In the Senate, only one Democrat facing a tight reelection contest voted against
the resolution; five vulnerable Democrats and all five vulnerable Republicans voted
for it (‘Analyzing the war votes’, ). At the leadership level, senior Democrats
wanted to get the issue off the agenda so that Democrats could run on domestic
issues. Other Democrats may have decided not to challenge a popular president.
The vote on the resolution effectively ended the substantive role of the Congress.
When protests developed in late winter, calls for a new resolution found little
support in Congress. Criticisms of the war were limited to hearings and requests
for more information on costs and postwar scenarios. Congress had largely been
outmaneuvered by an administration that took advantage of the divisions among
Democrats and support among Republicans to get a green light for its Iraq pol-
icy. While public opinion caused some members of Congress to criticize the policy,
there was no institutional interest in taking responsibility for the issue away from
the administration (Fessenden & Cochran, ; Skorneck, ).
As for the UN, the administration succeeded in securing a Security Council
Resolution on Iraq, after a good deal of diplomatic maneuvering, by a vote of –.
In pushing for the UN resolutions, the administration stressed two things. First,
as one high-level official put it, that ‘the USA is prepared to use force to enforce
the resolutions’, rather than doing limited bombings. Second, as Rice put it,
‘The world has to have a zero-tolerance view on Iraq. . . . it is not incumbent on
the UN to find things . . . it is incumbent on Saddam Hussein to show that he is
compliant’ (quoted in Gibbs & Duffy, ). The UN resolution paved the way
for the return, on November , of international inspectors. But the resolution
did not authorize the use of force against Iraq and the Bush administration
agreed to return to the Security Council before taking further action. Meanwhile,
it claimed the resolution gave it what it wanted. It declared Iraq in ‘material breach’
of previous UN resolutions, set the Iraqis specific requirements, and threatened
‘serious consequences’ for further violations (Lynch, ).
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
One reason the administration persevered with the UN was to convince the
public that it was doing all it could to avoid war. This was particularly important
since only a minority of Americans favored war without UN backing. In an
NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, taken on October ,  percent of those inter-
viewed thought ‘the United States should take military action against Iraq only
with the support of the United Nations’; only  percent thought the USA
should act ‘even if the United Nations does not support such action’. As Rice
acknowledged: ‘It is important for the American people to see that before you
order their sons and daughters into battle, you have done everything you can to
find a solution’ (quoted in Gibbs & Duffy, ).
Overall, the fall strategy was designed to create interlocking pressure among
the UN, public opinion, and the Congress. First, it used the promise of UN
action and general public support for the president to get backing from the
Congress. Then, it employed its backing by the Congress and public as leverage
with the UN. Finally, it hoped that with both congressional and UN backing
it could create the conditions under which public opinion would support its use
of military force.
The administration’s public relations effort emphasized different arguments
to the different actors. To the public and Congress, it highlighted the need for
regime change, the dangers of Iraqi WMD, and Iraq’s links to terrorists. To the
UN, it stressed the importance of past resolutions and the need for Iraq to com-
ply with them. Although the administration continually declared that war was
avoidable, its public relations effort was designed to maximize domestic and
international support for removing Saddam from power.

S T A G E : T H E F I N A L P U S H
Although a large amount of diplomatic activity occurred between the UN reso-
lution of November ,  and the beginning of the war on March , ,
neither the maneuvering in the UN nor signs of public opposition affected the
eventual policy decision.
Iraq accepted the conditions of the UN resolution on November  and inter-
national inspectors resumed inspections, for the first time since , on
November . As required by the resolution, Iraq gave the UN on December  a
,-page document on its weapons programs. However, while some, like
France, saw this as progress, the administration saw it as more obstruction. By
mid-December, the administration had concluded that military action to remove
Hussein was inevitable. According to top officials, the Iraqi declaration was ‘not
even a credible document’; rather, it was a sign that Iraq had decided not to
cooperate, or worse, was mocking the administration’s efforts. That conclusion
foreclosed any real possibility of resolving the situation without military action.
After implying, in the late fall, that Saddam’s compliance with the UN resolutions
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

would mean that the regime had changed (and he could stay in power), by
the time a personal emissary from French President Jacques Chirac visited
Washington in mid-January, the message from Rice and other top officials was
that the only thing that could prevent war was the removal of Saddam altogether
(‘War in Iraq’, ).
The move towards war led to opposition from parts of the American public
and broad segments of the international community. Domestically, on the weekend
of January  and , tens of thousands protested the Iraq policy in Washington;
other protests took place around the country. Bush saw the protests as signifi-
cant, not because they might undermine domestic support for his policy, but
because Saddam might think the USA would not be able to deliver on its threats
(Woodward, , p. ). In fact, polled support for military action remained
high (Figure ).
Fearing that Saddam would read domestic and international opposition as a
sign of weakness, the White House decided to launch another public relations
offensive. This centered on the release of American intelligence that revealed
how the Iraqis had cheated during the inspections and was designed to address
concerns from the public and the international community (Woodward, b).
At the highest level, the two main components of this effort were Bush’s 
State of the Union address on January  and Powell’s presentation of intelli-
gence data to the UN Security Council on February . In the State of the Union
address, Bush pointed to Hussein’s connection with terrorists, desire for WMD,
and human rights record. A centerpiece of his argument to justify doing ‘every-
thing in our power to make sure that day never comes’ was to posit a reprise of
September , this time with WMD (Gordon, ). White House officials
acknowledged that they saw the speech as a chance to bolster Bush’s standing
and strengthen the case for war in Iraq, especially given rising economic difficul-
ties. Bush met with network anchors and newspaper columnists to ensure that
his message got out in the frame he desired (Milbank & Allen, ). Powell’s
presentation to the Security Council provided what he claimed were details of
Iraq’s WMD program and ballistic missile capabilities. He took advantage of his
high credibility to provide the ‘facts’ in the hopes that others would draw the
administration’s conclusions (Daalder & Lindsey, , p. –; Woodward,
, pp. –).
Powell’s presentation was the culmination of a public relations effort officials
dated to December  when CIA Director George Tenet presented intercepts to
Bush of Iraqis discussing ‘nerve agents’. The president had initially been under-
whelmed by the presentation: ‘nice try’, he said. ‘I don’t think this is quite—it’s
not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence
from’. While some officials worried that no convincing evidence might exist,
Powell took a scaled down version of this presentation to the UN (quoted in
Woodward, , pp. –, –). Coordinated efforts had other senior
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
officials, including Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice making the rounds on televi-
sion. Close attention was also paid to polling to determine the effect of their
activities. White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said, ‘We knew
there was going to have to be a steady escalation of public appearances and
speeches and comments about the nature of the threat’. Powell was the adminis-
tration’s most valued member for turning public opinion both domestically and
internationally (quoted in Bumiller, ). A senior official who had detailed
knowledge of the nuances of public support for war explained, ‘I could go on and
on [regarding polling specifics]. The point remains the same. Large majorities of
the American people continue to support the use of force to disarm Saddam
Hussein’ (quoted in Tumulty, ).
The evidence on the success of these leadership efforts is mixed. The most
frequently repeated question (Figure ) on military action against Iraq found
no movement in the already high level of support. On the other hand, one
Newsweek question asked before and after Bush’s  State of the Union and
Powell’s presentation indicated that they had moved public opinion in the admin-
istration’s direction. On January , the poll found  percent favoring the use of
‘military force against Iraq’. On February , the poll reported a jump of 
percentage points in this figure with the level of opposition falling from  to 
percent.
While his staff paid close attention to shifts in public opinion, Bush publicly
discounted it. In the face of millions protesting world-wide and in America,
Bush stated, ‘Democracy is a beautiful thing . . . people are allowed to express
their opinion. Some in the world don’t view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I
respectfully disagree’. And he added, ‘Size of protest—it’s like deciding, “Well,
I’m going to decide policy based upon a focus group.” The role of a leader is to
decide policy based upon the security . . . of the people’. Adding a reference to
American nuclear policy during the s, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer
noted: ‘Often, the message of protesters is contradicted by history’ (quoted in
Miga, ).
What about the public’s reaction to the lack of a second UN resolution? The
administration was not particularly fearful. ‘Once the public hears the names of 
countries they recognize [in the “coalition of the willing”], they will be reassured’,
a White House official remarked (quoted in Tumulty, ). As passage of a
second UN resolution began to appear unlikely, the administration circulated
word that its importance had more to do with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s
political standing than the American public’s expressed preference for action
within a UN mandate (Whitelaw, Walsh, Omestad, & Barnes, ). By early
March, with France and Russia threatening to veto any resolution authorizing the
use of force, the administration had clearly lost patience with diplomacy. ‘More
and more people are saying “enough already.” ’, said one official. ‘You’re either
with us or not’. By this time, Bush had decided to move militarily rather than wait
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

(quoted in Ratnesar, ). The percentage of the public finding that the adminis-
tration had explained its position peaked in February (Figure ). Support for
military action remained high (Figure ). Two days before the war began, an
ABC/Washington Post poll estimated that  percent of the public supported
( percent strongly) America’s ‘going to war with Iraq’; only  percent opposed.

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE DECISION TO GO TO WAR:

IM PL I CA T I O N S
Public opinion remained a constant factor in the process. While the administra-
tion appeared attentive to the contours of public attitudes, its response to these
attitudes varied. Ironically, it was at the beginning, when the public was largely
focused on the aftermath of September , al Qaeda, and Afghanistan, that the
public’s influence was strongest. As attention turned toward Iraq, the adminis-
tration did not respond to public attitudes but instead created an integrated and
comprehensive public relations strategy to both subdue domestic political oppo-
nents and generate support for the policy it had chosen to pursue. Although the
administration’s leadership effort seemed to affect public perceptions of whether
the administration had ‘explained’ the policy, polling trends suggest that admin-
istration leadership efforts only had a marginal effect on overall support for the
conflict. Polls indicate considerable public support for the direction of the
administration’s policy.
The Bush administration’s process of decision-making seems to have been
largely anticipated by the literature. In the immediate aftermath of September ,
when most of the public favored action against al Qaeda, public opinion con-
strained the administration from considering an attack on Iraq. As decision-making
became focused on Iraq, the administration sought to lead the public using a
combination of persuasion and priming—especially in relation to WMD. The
public consistently saw an Iraqi WMD program, potential use of WMD, and a
WMD transfer to terrorists as threats (Table ). The administration emphasized
each of these things in its statements. So successful were its efforts that before
the war the majority of the public believed Iraq possessed WMD; after the war,
roughly a third incorrectly believed that the USA had actually discovered WMD
(Kull et al., –). Generally, the administration formed an accurate impres-
sion of public opinion based largely on a blend of perceptions of the opinion con-
text (early) and specific measures of public opinion (later).
Despite its extensive efforts, the administration appears not to have boosted
public support for the war; this hovered at around  percent for most of the
period, from early  until the outbreak of war. It successfully ‘led’ the public
to war in large part because, after September , the public was inclined to
support a war. This would appear to be consistent with previous research that
suggests that the effect of elite leadership on foreign policy is more limited than
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 

TABLE  Weapons of mass destruction as a reason for military action

Jan , April , Sept. , March ,
a a b c
% % % %
Good/important reason    
Bad/not important reason    
No opinion/don’t know/refused    
Total    
(N = ) (,) (,) (,) (,)
a
Princeton Survey Research Associates. ‘If we learned that Iraq is developing nuclear weapons or weapons of
mass destruction . . . would that be a very important reason, fairly important reason, or not important reason to
justify the use of military force against Iraq?’ ‘Important’ and ‘fairly important’ combined (ratio is : in
January  and : in April  respectively).
b
Gallup Organization. ‘Do you think each of the following is a good or a bad reason for the Bush administra-
tion to take military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq? How about . . . the administration
believes Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction?’
c
Gallup Organization. ‘Please say whether it is: a very good reason, a good reason, a bad reason, or a very bad
reason for taking military action against Iraq . . . Iraq would be prevented from using weapons of mass destruc-
tion or providing them to terrorists.’ Very good/good and very bad/bad combined (ratio is : and :
respectively).

commonly supposed (Jacobs & Shapiro, ). Others have concluded that the
administration was fairly effective at creating misperceptions (e.g. about Iraqi
links to al Qaeda, the support of world public opinion for the invasion, and the
post-conflict discovery of WMD) and that this helped build support for the war
(Kull et al., –). But, on our reading, while large sections of the public were
no doubt misinformed, this did not add to the high level of support for the war
that already existed post-September . Still, the evidence on this point is more
suggestive in nature and further evaluation of this issue will require additional
research.
The high level of public support for military action against Iraq would seem to
account for both the success of the Bush administration in implementing its pol-
icy and the support it received from Congress. Graham’s research suggests that
the public rarely influences policy when less than  percent favors a position;
popular presidents can overcome even small majorities of – percent. When
levels of support rise above  percent, the public’s preferred policy is usually
adopted (Graham, , pp. –). This dynamic would seem to account for
the focus on al Qaeda in the days after September . On Iraq, a majority of the
public favored intervention throughout the period and at times this support
crossed the  percent threshold, especially in the period preceding the congres-
sional resolution and before the war. In this sense, while the administration did
not change public opinion, it was able to use the high level of support for its pol-
icies to leverage support from other political actors in the American system.
Though Bush was forced to comment on the large public protests against his
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

policies, support in the polls allowed him to ignore the protests and mitigate
their effects on other political actors.
Finally, while the administration’s public relations program seems not to have
affected overall support for military action, the long-term consequences of its
public relations efforts appear more problematic. President Bush took the United
States to war against a threat that was controversial at the time and has become
more so after the failure to discover WMD. While the failure to find WMD has
been seen as evidence of intelligence failure, faulty foreign policy decision-making,
or duplicitous public relations (Pollack, ), these criticisms do not address the
core reasons for the American decision to go to war. Although the administration
chose to justify its actions by reference to WMD, its motivations really stemmed
from a more diffuse and uncertain projection of what an Iraqi WMD program
would mean for American security sometime in the future. Since the administra-
tion believed that this assessment would not effectively ‘sell’ the policy to the UN
and Congress (and to the American public to a lesser extent), it chose instead to
describe its policy in terms of Iraq actually possessing WMD. Thus, from a public
relations standpoint, the administration faced a conundrum of a convinced pub-
lic, a persuadable Congress, and a hostile international community; each requir-
ing different arguments and evidence.
Given this situation, the administration chose a public relations strategy that
appears to be a prime example of policy ‘oversell’ (Lowi, ): the exaggeration
of threats in order to generate public support and overcome domestic opposition.
In this case, the concept of oversell would seem to extend to the international
community as evidenced by the Powell presentation directed toward rallying
world opinion. For the international community and Congress, the WMD claim
was critical. However, given the high level of public support for the war through-
out, while the public was responsive to the administration’s WMD claims, they
were not necessary for public support. While the failure to find WMD clearly
exacerbated the USA’s tenuous standing in the international community, its
effect domestically is less clear. Although the administration insisted that Saddam
actually possessed WMD, Bush later backed away from this claim, even asking, in
December , ‘So, what’s the difference?’ Whether Saddam possessed WMD
or merely had a program to develop WMD had become a matter of indifference.
While it may be understandable, given his view of the threat to national security
posed by September , that Bush would not distinguish between the two kinds
of threat, the ‘imminent threat’ from Saddam’s possession of WMD claimed by
the administration certainly affected the level of congressional backing for the war
(Stevenson, ) and was an important element in the case presented to the UN
even if it did not affect the public. With the failure to find evidence of a significant
WMD program, much less WMD, and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq,
public opinion began to waver; a New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted
April , , found that  percent thought the United States did the ‘right
 BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S DECISION TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ 
thing’ ‘in taking military action against Iraq’;  percent thought the USA should
‘have stayed out’. These results represent a significant drop from the same poll in
December  in which  percent of those interviewed saw the decision as the
‘right thing’;  percent wished the USA had ‘stayed out’. While the Bush admin-
istration clearly oversold the nature and extent of the immediate threat from Iraq,
it remains too early to say definitively whether it will have any long-term effect on
support for American involvement in Iraq or on Bush’s reelection bid.

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Douglas C. Foyle is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, where
he specializes in international relations and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently working
on a book examining how impending elections affect the manner in which leaders con-
front international threats. He received his Ph.D. from Duke University and is the
author of Counting the Public In: Presidents, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy ().
Address correspondence to Douglas C. Foyle, Wesleyan University,  Church Street,
Government Department, Middletown, CT , USA, E-mail: dfoyle@wesleyan.edu