A majority of Americans have held at least one of three mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to a new study released Thursday, and those misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the war.
The three common mistaken impressions are that:

• U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
  
• There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.
  
• People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.
  

...
The reasons for the misperceptions are numerous, Kull and other analysts said.

They noted that the Bush administration had misstated or exaggerated some of the intelligence findings, with Bush himself saying in May: "We found the weapons of mass destruction … and we'll find more as time goes by."

The Bush administration has also been a factor in persistent confusion.

Last month, for example, Bush said there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attack after Vice President Dick Cheney suggested a link. Cheney, in a "Meet the Press" interview, had described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11."

Why some news audiences had more accurate impressions than others was less clear.

Kull cited instances in which TV and newspapers gave prominent coverage to reports that banned weapons might have been found in Iraq, but only modest coverage when those reports turned out to be wrong.

» Study: Wrong impressions helped support Iraq war