Washington Post : 2 Years After Invasion, Poll Data Mixed

2 Years After Invasion, Poll Data Mixed (washingtonpost.com)

See the full poll results at PollingReport.com.

One of the reasons I am optimistic about the human race (and about America's future) is that even though people can be fooled with lies and innuendo and propaganda, you cannot negate their essential goodness and their desire for truth. People don't want to do the wrong thing; they see a complex world and want to make the difficult choices that are for the best. That is why humans are so dependent on good information. When we get bad information, we will probably make bad decisions (hear that, Howie?). And we have been getting bad information in this country for a long time now.

So, there are pieces of this poll that are stunning. Consider this:

61% still believe Iraq provided direct aid to al Qa'ida.
56% still believe Iraq had WMDs that have judt not been found.
55% still believe that the Bush administration did not intentionally try to mislead the American people into war.

This is all, I suppose, understandable; as I said, I don't believe any creature that is essentially good wants to do the wrong thing, and so they will cling to beliefs that justify their decisions, even the in face of hard evidence that those beliefs have no foundation in reality.

On the plus side, reality seems to have sunk in at least a bit on the overall execution of the war. Take for example:

57% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the war.
57% don't believe that Bush has a clear plan for handling it.
53% think that, weighing the cost versus the benefits, the war was not worth fighting.
70% think the number of US casualties is unacceptable.
71% think the war has made the US position in the world weaker (41%) or has left it unchanged (30%).
54% think that the possibilities for democracy in the world as a result of this war is either less likely (9%) or unchanged (45%).

This flies in the face of the long-term goals of PNAC, which wants to project US force across the earth making the world safe for global capital. Americans don't want to do that; that's one of the reasons, I believe, that PNAC is mentioned so rarely (if EVER) in the mainstream media. Americans are idealistic and courageous enough never to hide from necessary warfare; but we're also decent enough not to want to fight indiscriminately. PNAC makes no such distinctions, and the American people, if they knew about PNAC, would be astonished and angry.

Which gets me to another point about this mainstream article. It mentions and quotes William Kristol as a supporter of the war against Iraq, identifying him as "editor and publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard," which is true. What it does not mention (and someone please explain to me why?) is that Kristol is also the Chairman of the PNAC, and one of the chief authors of the argument for WMDs in Iraq and for US military intervention. As such, he is one of the people most responsible for the war. Isn't that an important piece of information the American people might like to know?

Or that PNAC's Statement of Principles was developed by Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Jeb Bush, and others?