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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (122352)	12/28/2003 11:12:34 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

Time to call it a morning. See ya!

To: Neocon who wrote (122352)	12/28/2003 12:18:06 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Somebody's spinning here, that's for sure. The article is not clearly written, and seems to have been a little butchered by the Guardian editors too. But if you work through the numbers, it's pretty clear that there were four choices, not three, and Bremer got 73% on the not very much / no confidence choices, 27% for quite a bit / a great deal of confidence. If you want to read "not very much confidence" as a positive vote, that's your privilege, it might or might not qualify you for a W PR job. Here is a less butchered version of the AP story: news.com.au A clip from that version: Asked how much confidence they had in US and UK forces in Iraq, 56.6 per cent of respondents said they had none at all and 22.2 per cent said they didn't have very much confidence, while only 7.6 per cent had "a great deal". Regarding the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by US administrator Paul Bremer, 43.5 per cent of those questioned expressed no confidence, and 29.9 per cent said they had not very much confidence. Only 6.1 per cent of interviewees said they had "a great deal" of confidence in political parties, while only 16.2 said they had "quite a lot". Of the remainder, 44.6 per cent said they had none at all. The rest had "not very much" confidence. If you really want spin, there's this version, which presumably was approved by Cheney and the war marketeers. Iraqi Public Opinion Poll Finds Overwhelming Support for Democratic Future voanews.com Or maybe not totally approved, even VOA let slip this bit at the end: But the survey discovered very little gratitude toward the U.S. and British troops who toppled Saddam Hussein. The survey concludes that occupation forces are "the most mistrusted institution in Iraq today." Only one in five respondents said they have either a great deal, or quite a lot of confidence in the foreign troops, while Iraqi religious leaders ranked as the most trusted, with 70 percent approval.

To: Neocon who wrote (122352)	12/28/2003 2:00:19 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; Re: "Here is something that shows how interesting spin can be. I will highlight the critical section: ... The highlighted paragraph reads that a majority of Iraqis have some or a lot of confidence in Paul Bremer and the CPA. However, it is phrased to emphasize that there is that the majority does not have a robust degree of confidence." Win Smith already proved your liberal interpretation of the facts wrong in this post: #reply-19633088 So what do you have to say for yourself? Here is what you wrote: Neocon, December 28, 2003 ... The highlighted paragraph reads that a majority of Iraqis have some or a lot of confidence in Paul Bremer and the CPA. ... #reply-19632917 The simple truth is that the percentage of Iraqis who have some or a lot of confidence in Paul Bremer and the CPA is only about 27%. So you mistook 27% for a majority, LOL. I say that this is just another example of the neocon ability to look at the world with glasses that are so deeply rose colored that they are unable to distinguish even between black and white. You read the article, you didn't understand the statistics, so you jumped to a favorable conclusion, and then you posted it for all to see without bothering to check your facts. Just like Bush's f'ing war. You truly have no ability to understand even the simplest facts. What's odd is that your posts are not the obvious posts of an idiot. You use grammar reasonably well. Other than your inability to see even the simplest facts, your posts are logical, so what is going on here? Are you lying to us deliberately? Are you so blinded by partisanship that you are unable to see even the ground in front of you? Explain! -- Carl

To: Neocon who wrote (122352)	12/28/2003 4:25:16 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

US scales down plans for Iraq: report Sun Dec 28,12:33 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Attacks on the US-led occupation and an accelerated timetable for Iraq (news - web sites)'s return to sovereignty have prompted the United States to scale down its ambitious agenda for remaking that country, it was reported. The Washington Post reported that US officials had in the past few months dropped plans to privatize state-owned businesses and backed off efforts to disarm militias under the control of ethnic and political factions. "The Americans are coming to understand that they cannot change everything they want to change in Iraq," Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim political party cooperating with the US-led occupation, told the daily. "They need to let the Iraqi people decide the big issues." The US administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty to a provisional government, the Post said. "There's no question that many of the big-picture items have been pushed down the list or erased completely," a senior US official involved in Iraq's reconstruction told the daily on condition of anonymity. "Right now, everyone's attention is focused (on) doing what we need to do to hand over sovereignty by next summer." The anti-US insurgency has killed 209 American soldiers since May 1, when US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) declared major combat ended in Iraq, according to an AFP count. Four Bulgarian soldiers, two Thais and seven Iraqis were killed Saturday in fighting in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, capping a particularly bloody week in the war-torn country. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Neocon who wrote (122352)	12/29/2003 9:36:56 AM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 281500

Something just occurred to me to point out. 30% said they had "some confidence" (but not very much). In the line about the troops, 7.6 % had said they had a "great deal of confidence". Suppose that the figure for " a great deal of confidence" in the CPA was similar, say 8%. Then the overall confidence figure would be 38%. With a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, that would mean that those with a some or a great deal of trust were in a statistical tie with those with no confidence. This is before the question of whether there was more of an expression of confidence suppressed (why didn't they mention the "great deal of confidence" figure?), or how to interpret undecideds........