{"id":211,"date":"2003-04-08T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2003-04-08T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/211.html"},"modified":"2003-04-08T08:00:11","modified_gmt":"2003-04-08T13:00:11","slug":"why-polls-on-the-war-lack-meaning-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-polls-on-the-war-lack-meaning-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Why polls on the war lack meaning for me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a voracious reader of polls; I almost don’t care what the topic is. With that in mind, I’ve noticed several recent surveys from the last week or so regarding the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, a strong majority of Americans are supporting the military, the war, and the president during the conflict.<\/p>\n

An ABC\/Washington Post poll<\/a>, completed over the weekend, showed that 77% of respondents support the United States “having gone to war with Iraq.” This is the highest number of supporters since the pollsters began asking the question last fall.<\/p>\n

Another poll, completed by USA Today\/CNN\/Gallup<\/a>, reflected similar results. Support for the war stood at 70%, while 79% said they’re certain the U.S. will “win” the war.<\/p>\n

These are the results that nearly everyone would expect. When the troops are in harm’s way and a war is being waged, it would be unprecedented for the public not<\/i> to rally in support of the effort.<\/p>\n

The conclusions Americans have drawn about the purpose and the motivation for the war, however, are troubling.<\/p>\n

Debate over the efficacy and utility of war in Iraq dominated the media for about a year. The public had ample time to consider the various arguments for and against an invasion and draw their own conclusions.<\/p>\n

That’s why the results of a recent LA Times poll<\/a> were so disconcerting to me. As Ron Bronstein reported on Saturday, “Nearly eight in 10 Americans now accept the Bush administration’s contention — disputed by some experts — that Hussein has ‘close ties’ to Al Qaeda.” The story added that almost three of four Democrats even accept this to be true.<\/p>\n

This is an idea that has been rejected by nearly the entire intelligence community. The Bush administration has suggested a Hussein\/Al Queda connection, or has Colin Powell has called it, a “nexus,” but they’ve offered no proof to substantiate these claims. I would have hoped the number of people who would be skeptical of these claims would be higher than this.<\/p>\n

It gets worse. The same LA Times poll found that 60% of Americans “say they believe Hussein bears at least some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”<\/p>\n

Now there’s really no reason for this. No one, not even the White House, has accused Iraq of participating in the 9\/11 attacks. If Hussein did have something to do with the terrorism of 9\/11, support for the war would be nearly 100%, we would have easily been able to recruit support from the U.N., and an invasion of Iraq would have begun a long time ago.<\/p>\n

I’ll keep reading these polls, but you’ll forgive me if I take public opinion on foreign affairs with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a voracious reader of polls; I almost don’t care what the topic is. With that in mind, I’ve noticed several recent surveys from the last week or so regarding the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, a strong majority of Americans are supporting the military, the war, and the president during the conflict. An ABC\/Washington […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}