Hi Neocon; Re: "I am happy to concede that spinning goes on on both sides."
Five hundred of our soldiers are dead, thousands of Iraqis are dead, untold thousands are wounded. And this is the best you can come up with?
Re: "In any event, the most relevant thing might be that the overwhelming majority (I believe it was 70 %) express distrust of just about everyone, and say they would never talk politics freely. ... Considering the fact that you do not know when a Ba'athist flunky is monitoring such conversations, that makes a lot of sense."
The Iraqis are, by neoconservative admission, a cowed and fearful people. The assumption that they are answering polls with the true feelings in their hearts is shaky. Their fear of their new rulers, the CPA, probably tilts their poll answers towards positive or neutral. Your bringing up the bogeyman of the deposed regime is another grasp at a straw. The arrest of Saddam should put paid to this kind of fantasy logic, but my guess is that you will come up with something else.
But to get back to your assertion, unlike the US, our military, and the CPA, the religious leaders in Iraq have very high confidence polling figures in Iraq, and their parties would undoubtedly win any elections. Which, of course, is why the CPA keeps postponing Iraqi elections.
-- Carl |
