The origin of those claims is news stories like this one:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm

which says:

Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks

Even as recently as a year ago, one third of Americans still seem to believe this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/washington/10poll.html

It says:

33 percent of all Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, say Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

I don’t get where you can say:

When in fact no survey has ever shown that anything more than a small fraction of Americans ever believed that

You could argue that these surveys were flawed, that the question was worded poorly,  or something like that, but I don’t see how you can deny that these surveys existed.

Isn’t it interesting that when centrists disagree with the right, they’re being sensible, but when they disagree with the left, they’ve been fooled or scared or something?

By the way, it is a fact that Saddam had WMDs, just not the quantities believed; that, of course, is ultimately due to his deceptions and treaty violations, as well as his totalitarian rule. It was an intelligence failure on our part, but an understandable one.

I have yet to meet a single person, nor to read a single mainstream conservative commenter, who believes Saddam  had "operational" ties to Al Qaeda. I meet a lot of people on the left who claim that, though. Interesting disconnect. Saddam was of course a sponsor of international terrorism, and substantial data suggests there were friendly ties to Al Qaeda, as well as some likely nudge-and-wink stuff, but nothing major with Al Qaeda.

Interestingly enough, I continue to hear bizarre claims from the left that most, or at least a plurality or something, of Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11. When in fact no survey has ever shown that anything more than a small fraction of Americans ever believed that–and even prominent left-wing sources have had to admit that the administration never, ever said any such thing. Yet still, we have people like you, Mike, dragging this same old shit out and, no matter how often you’re corrected, still repeating it as if no one had let you know why you sounded so foolish.

[shrug] What can ya do? The left apparently likes to manufacture its own "facts" as much as the right does. Most sensible people see through this, even if the press itself often has blind spots in this regard.

The problem as I see it is that conservatives today have their own set of facts.

Take for example the question of WMDs in Iraq or links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Conservatives have their own set of facts, that are simply not believed by centerists or the left.

And as studies have shown, if you give conservatives the government reports that show Iraq had no WMD and no operational links to al Qaeda, conservatives are more convinced then ever that Iraq had WMDs and was working closely with al Qaeda.

When you have your own version of the facts, there is no such thing as objectivity.

Objectively, it’s not.

. There is the whole Al Gore is a habitual liar theme where Republicans took a few poorly worded statements that Al Gore made, twisted what Al Gore said, and then used the made up version to label Gore a liar.

They called him a serial exaggerator, and it was entirely justified.  And that goes both ways: do we need to revisit the whole "Reagan/Quayle/W/Palin is dumb" memes that were considerably less justified?

but very little mention of this in MSM.

Because the trooper was demonstrably a problem employee, and tasered his own son.  There’s no there there.  Meanwhile, Obama gets a pass on everything from sharing property with a convicted felon political fixer to buddying up with an unrepentant terrorist to attending a radical black nationalist church.

Anyways, the press tends to begin from the same assumptions that Democrats, because they by and large are Democrats; even if they really wanted to they couldn’t cover things from the center or right because they just don’t have the context.  This is reflected both in what they cover (100 front page NYT pieces on Abu Ghraib, endless calls to investigate the Valerie Plame leak) and what they don’t (very few pieces on heroic American servicepeople, no calls at all to investigate national security leaks that actually hurt national security) and in how they cover things (the economy is always struggling, social programs are always the answer).

The truth is that conservatives have been yelling liberal bias for so many years, that the MSM bends over backwards to be defferiental to Republicans for fear of being labeled biased.

Many MSM organizations sent reporters to Alaska find out about Palin, because they knew almost nothing about her. They had never expected her to be a VP candidate. Statements that these reporters are "Dumpster Diving" in a Alaska is almost certainly an exaggeration. 

There is the "troopergate" scandal which is being investigated in Alaska. There has been lots of coverage of this on left wing blogs, but very little mention of this in MSM. I think if Palin was a Democrate, the MSM would be all over the troopergate investigation. Now the MSM has some reporters in Alaska following it, but they don’t report on it daily in the MSM.

Now for the apples and apples. Find an incident where the NY Times made a similarly damaging claim about Senator Obama based on a single unsubstantiated quote from a single source and without making any substantive investigation of their own.

Allegations that fit their preconceptions need  a single source before printing, often an anonymous source. Allegations that don’t fit their preconceptions require a photo or a subpoena or multiple sources.

This is a simple filtering effect. Those preconceptions form a powerful yet subtle filter: "Oh, really? Senator McCain ate the head off a chicken? I knew he was unstable! Stop the presses!" "What? Senator Obama ate the head off a chicken? That can’t be right. Do you have any confirmation?" And no, it’s not as blatant as that; but it’s blatant, as the mistress story shows.

I agree we’re never going to convince each other, BTW, but I am finding the discussion interesting. 

Well, most of the other things weren’t of the same sort.  Obviously I’m not going to question whether MSNBC employs Keith Olbermann, because that’s just factually true.  It’s also factually true that CBS based a story on forged memos, and I agree with you that they were obviously forged and if you want to talk about Dan Rather clearly being biased you’re not going to get any guff from me.  Journalists protecting a source are always controversial, so my reaction is, eh.  Yes, the Times did report that Palin had been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, based on – a statement by the Alaskan Independence Party, which was later retracted, which the NYT also printed.

Again, once you’ve moved to the level of interpreting a request not to repeat rumors on blogs as a request to kill the story no matter what the evidence, you’ve moved to the level of intepretation.  It may be reasonable interpretation, but it’s still interpretation, and of course you’re going to interpret it in the light of your pre-existing beliefs.  That’s what everyone does. 

When I use an obscure reference that I don’t think will be immediately recognized, I cite it. For the most part I avoid that because it’s usually not necessary to dig for obscure examples for me to make the points I am making.

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