as someone pointed out (1+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Judgment at Nuremberg
(Harold Meyerson?), this is a "win the vote" now if Rs vote with the majority or win the congressional seat in 2008 situation for the D's if they don't. There's only so much you can do when you don't have the votes.

The slow motion destruction of the Republican brand goes on apace, in any case.

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho Marx

by DemFromCT on Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 11:46:20 AM PDT

Meyerson is wrong and invoking Meyerson does not make you right. The supplemental bill stinks and is NOT a win for ending the Debacle.

I understand and am disappointed to agree with pollsters when they say "most people won't sit still for more than a one sentence question that can be answered with a yes or no".   "Garbage in - Garbage out" as was made famous in the computer data industry.  Maybe poll fewer people but much more in depth?  But then does that attract people who have little to do and, perhaps, are biased one way or the other by their slow life style?  How to do an accurate poll?  Got me!

Until someone figures it out, I pay no attention to polls conducted by the left or right.  As much as the left "knows" this quoted poll is "absolutely correct", there are polls from the right showing numbers just the opposite and the right is just as convinced their numbers are "absolutely correct".

But, for all the variables, it does seem poll outcomes can be moved the most by how the question is worded, including what is in the question and what is left out.  

For instance, if someone on the far right were to ask this same question, it might be: "Do you favor or oppose Congressional legislation that would require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008 (now, "far right" added words) "if doing so would immediately transfer the killings, bombings, rapes and all other atrocities to our country and would bring on the end of Western Civilization and death to you, your family and everyone you know?".  Hypothetical?   No! Not if you read blogs that "lean right" or receive their mailings!   This is really what the far right believes will happen just as the left (I think?) believes leaving Iraq will cause the country no more physical harm than leaving Vietnam did in 1975.  

Sorry, this does exclude the ones off the edge on both ends who either believe "9/11" and Al Qaeda are departments of the CIA and (off the other end) that ANSWER was begun and is run by North Korea.

The right asking the SAME question but adding to the question could end up with a 98% "stay" percentage. They have such polls and tout them just as this poll is publicized.  "The battle of the polls"!  

What would happen if we just called Fed-Ex to pick up everything we have in Iraq and be gone in 48 hours?  No one REALLY knows.  But short question polls asking for just a yes or no will continue to just add confusion to the discussion.  Both sides (even the middle!) do it.  I submit the one thing both sides should consider of any proposed action is to ponder what might happen two or three chess moves ahead.  Everyone seems to be "playing checkers" (one move at a time with no thought of "what might happen next") instead of "playing chess".   "Get in" was a checkers move.  "Get out" is the same.  So is "stay".  

No need to strongly defend this quoted poll any more than anyone from the right needs to chime in saying "our polls are more in-depth and accurate unlike the all emotion polls of the left".  No, I've read polls of both sides and they are almost all short and written to obtain a desired outcome.  I'm definitely not calling for the end of such polls (or any other form of Free Speech!). I'm just making the point that I pay no attention to the outcome unless I'm also told the question (and all that surrounded it).  I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of polls I've read of which the question was adequately detailed to provide the person being polled enough information to give a reasoned answer.  But, as the pollsters will say, "not one person in a thousand will sit still for that!".  So what's the answer? - got me!

An uninformed society is open to short questions where the pollster already has the predetermined checkmark made on the clipboard.  Joseph Goebbels said "propaganda is not propaganda if it is recognized as propaganda".  So true as evil as he and his Nazi regime was.  If one side "wins" in ANY difference between the two by means of unrecognized propaganda instead of by a careful review of the truth, does that mean "the end justifies the means"?  Unfortunately, I think so.

Back in the 1950's and into the 60's, a majority likely would have favored laws against black/white inter-marriage (especially in the south).  Somehow I think we're all better off that at least some of Washington (from both parties) decided to do the right thing rather than blindly following polls.

1. Follow the "leave now policy"

2. Iraq descends into an utter nightmare of Cambodian proportions

3. People who favored trying to stabilize Iraq use (2) as a cudgel to beat the "out now" crowd for the next 2-3 decades

We don't have genocide in Iraq right now, nothing close to it.  What we have is an ongoing terror campaign, of a slightly lesser scope than what the French faced in Algeria.  Horrible, yes - but nothing like the Cambodian situation.  The fact that you think we have that now merely points out how woefully uninformed you are about the past, never mind the present.  

Try looking here:

The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. As in Nazi Germany, and more recently in East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.

1.7 million is one of the lower end estimates for that horror - some estimates range as high as 3 million.  The Lancet Study - which has been completely debunked - estimated 650k deaths.  There have been fewer than half that, and while that's horrible enough, it doesn't match what happened in Cambodia - not by a long shot.

Let's take a look at what we have in Iraq, and across the middle east: a nascent regional conflict between the Sunni and the Shia.  Christianity had something like that, in the 30 years war (1618-1648).  That was fought with primitive weapons, and even so - the death toll in central Europe was horrific.  If we leave the region abruptly, we'll see an Islamic replay of that, but with modern weapons - possibly including nukes.

There's an additional problem.  Never mind alternative energy, at the moment (and for the forseeable future), the US and all of its trading partners rely on oil.  If a regional war breaks out involving the major players (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, possibly others) - what do you think will happen to oil prices?  When that happens, what do you think will happen to the economies of the US and our trading partners?  Nothing good, that's what.