Progress Being Made in Iraq (NY Times)

[1sokkermom]

<p>I agree that poll results can be influenced by the language used in the questioning, and the target audience who actually provide answers. The answers to vague or misleading qusetions can also be interpreted differently by different groups.</p>

[1sokkermom]

<p><a href=“http://www.fallacyfiles.org/readpoll.html[/url]”>http://www.fallacyfiles.org/readpoll.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>or here’s another:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/4[/url]”>http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[momfromme]

<p>Yep. No single poll can capture everything about public opinion with no error. No pollster ever said it could and, in fact, there’s an expectation of likely error that’s part of the statistical model. The Pew poll does as well as any other. </p>

<p>If you want to see how different polling firms have done in comparison to an average of polls, see the many graphs of presidential approval numbers for particular polls and the average poll – <a href=“Pollster”>Pollster;

[tommybill]

<p>From Post # 201</p>

<p>“I agree that poll results can be influenced by the language used in the questioning, and the target audience who actually provide answers. The answers to vague or misleading qusetions can also be interpreted differently by different groups.”</p>

<p>I don’t know who you are agreeing with I certainly did not say any of that. </p>

<p>While all of what you say may be true, these statements for the most part, are not a problem in modern polling, when the polling is done by competent people. As I have stated already, the well known polling organizations are staffed by competent people of integrity. This doesn’t mean they don’t make mistakes they do, but not many.</p>

<p>Two question for you</p>

<p>Were you as disparaging of polling when Geo. Bush was at 70 % approval?</p>

<p>Would you be willing to bet a year’s tuition at Duke on the 50 tightest house races, if you did not have access to polling information and the person you were betting against did?</p>

[tommybill]

<p>From post 202 ….</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/4[/url]”>http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A very good link anyone who is interested in polling should read it. </p>

<p>Pew will have a high pass on all of the questions ask</p>

[kluge]

<p>1sokkermom: “neo-Com”? Are you serious?</p>

[1sokkermom]

<p>Re post #204:</p>

<p>I don’t usually bet on house races or horse races. Neither makes much sense to me. </p>

<p>If I did bet, I’d bet you 2 years tuition at Swarthmore that I never said I like Bush or his policies. Infact, I would up the ante and bet that I actually stated that I never voted for him. So, his “approval” rating (whatever that is) has nothing to do with my opinion of political polls. I would also bet that I said I have not decided what candidate will get my vote in 2008. I don’t know yet. I do know I won’t be influenced by premature polls.</p>

<p>Re #206
Kluge,
Not sure about your quote. I posted the article(s), I didn’t write them, nor will I take credit for agreeing or disagreeing with them. They provide a different view.</p>

<p>(The only word I take credit for, from a different post is neofibs. It was in reference to Hillary’s neocon tendencies, and several other of her policy positions as well. …:))</p>

[tommybill]

<p>Re post 207 </p>

<p>if fact you have made it clear for some time you did not like Bush…I just ask what you were thinking about polls while he was up in them…</p>

<p>I admit that I am a person of low morals and bad manners, but even I as unpleasant a person as I am, would never stoop so low as to accuse someone of being a Bush supporter… I have some scruples …</p>

[tommybill]

<p>From post 207</p>

<p>“The only word I take credit for, from a different post is neofibs…”</p>

<p>And it is a great word and a worthy addition to the lexicon…I added it to my computer’s onboard dictionary as soon as I saw it used……</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>Democrats Praise Military Progress</p>

<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_go_co/iraq_democrats_1[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_go_co/iraq_democrats_1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[mini]

<p>Great. Except the purpose of the surge, according to the Prez, is NOT military progress.</p>

[tommybill]

<p>The problem in Iraq is political not military…what is the right wing’s ideas for getting the Iraqi government to take responsibility for their own country?</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>I didn’t realize that the surge was political, not military.</p>

[mini]

<p>Yup. The purpose of the surge, according to the Prez when he announced it, was to buy time for a political settlement, for which he supplied 18 specific benchmarks, virtually none of which have been met, and many of which are now further away than when the surge started.</p>

<p>No one doubts that if one sticks enough troops in for long enough, kill enough people, destroy enough homes, and create enough refugees (more than two million by last count - the equivalent of 40 million Americans fleeing their homes), one can temporarily pacify an area. We didn’t need a surge to know that.</p>

[BedHead]

<p>^^^^^</p>

<p>

Colin Powell on the surge:</p>

<p>Two months ago, Powell declared the surge a near-certain failure. On June 10, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he declared, “The current strategy to deal with it, called a surge – the military surge, our part of the surge under General Petraeus – the only thing it can do is put a heavier lid on this boiling pot of civil war stew … And so General Petraeus is moving ahead with his part of it, but he’s the one who’s been saying all along there is no military solution to this problem. The solution has to emerge from the other two legs, the Iraqi political actions and reconciliation, and building up the Iraqi security and police forces. And those two legs are not – are not going well. That part of strategy is not going well.”

</p>

<p>We are trying to contain a civil war between two groups who really don’t want reconciliation. The really discouraging thing is that Shiites (who represent the significant majority) are now apparently increasing their anti-American activities (I read this in a newspaper within the last week; I don’t have more authority for this than that), which would make sense given that they probably view us the only thing standing between them and their perceived rightful station as majority rulers. </p>

<p>Based on the track record of other countries (like Taiwan), the only likely way to get beyond a political impasse of this sort is to have a benevolent dictatorial regime for a long period of time that facilitates economic growth by providing security, investing in education, and actively working on an export strategy. As the economy becomes strong and can provide for a lot of the nation’s citizens and people have a strong stake in economic stability, then talk of political liberalization becomes more feasible.</p>

<p>How long did this take in Taiwan? Uh, the Nationalists took over in '49 in Taiwan and martial law was lifted in late 1987/early 1988. Oh, gee, it was only 40 years in a stable, rapidly growing place with no significant anti-American insurgency and receiving significant American aid.</p>

<p>Iraq is nearing the number of deaths we had in our civil war (600,000 - 900,000), it has had its professional classes largely flee, and it is a war zone. Forty years would be quick.</p>

<p>What a stupid, stupid idea it was to get involved in this country.</p>

[drb]

<p>More progress:

As British leave, Basra deteriorates
Shi’ite militias fight one another for control of city</p>

<p>By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post | August 9, 2007</p>

<p>WASHINGTON – As British forces pull back from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, Shi’ite militias there have escalated a violent battle against one another for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some US officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated national government will turn on one another once US troops begin to draw down.</p>

<p>Three major Shi’ite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets.</p>

<p>……….</p>

<p>For the past four years, the administration’s narrative of the Iraq war has centered on Al Qaeda, Iran and the sectarian violence they have promoted. But in the homogenous south – where there are virtually no US troops or Al Qaeda fighters, few Sunnis and by most accounts limited influence by Iran – Shi’ite militias fight each other as well as British troops. A British strategy launched last fall to reclaim Basra neighborhoods from violent actors – similar to the current US strategy in Baghdad – brought no lasting success.</p>

<p>“The British have basically been defeated in the south,” a senior US intelligence official said recently in Baghdad. They are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as “surrounded like cowboys and Indians” by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional US Embassy office and Britain’s remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.</p>

<p>…………</p>

<p>The ICG study described Iran, Britain, and the United States as confused about what is happening in Basra. During a recent visit there, the US official said, he was unable to meet with any local Iraqis outside the airport base or to travel beyond the secured route between the base and the palace.

</p>

[mini]

<p>We could send another 50,000 hostile, aggressive occupying forces into Basra, and “make military progress”, but what would be the point?</p>

<p>When a child breaks an antique in the antique store, you admonish him, take him out of the store, and make him pay for it through his allowance. You don’t send him back into the store to glue it together.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>If you want to use simplistic analogies, the better analogy is if the child is in the antique store and is the only one holding up the table with all of the antiques on it, you don’t drag him from the store only to let the table collapse and all of the antiques get smashed … especially if the neighboring antique dealers will then see this as opportunity to come in and take over the business. These antique dealers will then get into a fight and thus destroy all of their antiques and thus deprive the world of its supply of antiques.</p>

<p>Those who view the “solution” to the problem as simplistically as one of withdrawal are just as guilty of not thinking beyond the next step as they claim the administration was in starting the war.</p>

[mini]

<p>I think the next step is force Iraq to work with its neighbors - ESPECIALLY those we don’t happen to like - and the world community to ensure its own security, paid for by the United States, (and with the cost of maintaining the two million refugees paid for by the United States for the next generation), but with the hostile, aggressive U.S. suicide death squads gone from the scene. We broke it - we pay.</p>

[drb]

<p>Or maybe the analogy is the child is holding up the table with all the antiques, while other people in the store are taking the antiques and throwing them at each other, while at the same time kicking the child in the balls.</p>