[Dean's World] Dave Price: Surging Optimism, Revisionism

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Surging Optimism, Revisionism
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1196268966.shtml


   [1]This Financial Times article is all over the 'sphere:

     Some 48 per cent of Americans now believe that the US Âmilitary
     effort in Iraq is going well, compared with 30 per cent in
     February, according to the latest poll by the Pew Research Center.

   Of course, no media article on Iraq would be complete without some
   wild misstatements of fact:

     During the past month more Iraqis have returned than fled. It is
     the first time that has happened since the war began in 2003.

   Oh really?
   Apparently long-forgotten are the halcyon days shortly after the
   regime was toppled, when Ted Kennedy was claiming the war was "cooked
   up for political gain," the insurgency was barely a rumor, and Bush's
   photo-op with the "Mission Accomplished" banner was being criticized
   as political opportunism rather than premature triumphalism... and
   refugees who fled from the Hussein regime (remember those Shia mass
   graves? the Kurds attacked with WMD?) were [2]heading home.

     The first convoy is relatively straightforward as these refugees
     have volunteered go home to Iraq.
     Some of them began agitating to return soon after the fall of
     President Saddam Hussein, even staging sit-ins in their remote
     desert camp to press their case.
     ...
     The agency says it believes that up to half a million refugees
     could eventually seek its help to return to Iraq.

   [3]Sure enough, by early 2004, more had gone home:

     Since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the United Nations High
     Commissioner for Refugees has organized returns to Iraq for about
     4,500 refugees. An additional 50,000 to 100,000 Iraqis have
     returned, according to the U.N. agency.

   There's also a misleading question about when we would like troops to
   come home, misleading because it's spun as a measure of "support for
   the war" when, of course, everyone who supports the war would like our
   troops to be able to come home as soon as possible; not surprisingly,
   this confused metric hasn't changed much.
   A better poll question would be:
   "Who should determine troop levels in Iraq, U.S. military commanders
   on the ground in Iraq or politicians in Washington?"
   Then we'd see how much "support" those troop levels really have.

References

   1. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/22b3594a-9d47-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac.html
   2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3108783.stm
   3. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001884059_iraqis20m.html