Political Agendas and Polls

GOP3.com was quick to point out yesterday that the CBS poll indicating that President’s Bush’s approval rating was thirty-four percent was clearly biased (out of the 1018 surveyed, 272 were Republicans, 409 were Democrats, and 337 were Independents) yesterday.

With that said, I want to examine quickly how easy it has been for the left-wing media analysts to distort the truth of this poll. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel printed this morning on the front page (below the fold in the bottom right-hand corner) “Most Troops in Iraq Favor Leaving”. However, to their credit, unlike The New York Times and Editor & Publisher, they admit that “some U.S. military officials question validity of poll”, although I have only seen admission in the online version of the paper.

According to Zogby International, here is how the survey question was broken down …

How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?

"They should withdraw immediately" - 29.0%

"They should withdraw within the next six months" - 22.4%

"They should withdraw within six to twelve months" - 20.6%

"They should stay as long as they are needed" - 22.9%

"Not sure" - 5.0%

However, the poll does not take into account the Pentagon's plan to reduce US troops in Iraq by half in the next six months and by about seventy-five percent in the next year. More then likely the soldiers surveyed took this into account.

One need not go into this deep analysis to figure out the poll is bull-shit. A little further down, Zogby International has this intriguing little nugget …

A majority of troops (53%) said the U.S. should double both the number of troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.

Wait, I thought a majority of them wanted immediate pullout from Iraq? This interesting little tidbit kind of puts a stop to that myth.

Oh, and one more item you won't hear from the media ...

A large majority of the troops serving in Iraq said they were satisfied with the war provisions from Washington (adequate troop protection; body armor; Humvee plating, munitions).

Hat Tip: The Jawa Report