Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Poll: Few doubt wrongdoing in CIA leak

I feel like I'm in a polling mood. Here's another poll from CNN.Com:

(CNN) -- Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday.

Thirty-nine percent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter, in which the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, was revealed.

The same percentage of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said Bush administration officials acted unethically, but did nothing illegal.

The poll questioned 1,008 adults October 21-23 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Now I'll admit that the poll's percentage in error is pretty high at 5 percentage points, but when you've got a statistic of one in 10 Americans saying they believe that the Bush administration did nothing illegal in the Valerie Plame affair, you can kiss this sampling error goodbye. Bush has got a PR disaster here. Whatever he says about the Valerie Plame leaks, the only people who are going to believe him are his base supporters--basically the right-wingnuts. How much of the American public is going to believe the White House spin machine as they try to demonize Patrick Fitzgerald? In other words, 85-95 percent of the American public doesn't believe the Bush White House PR story regarding the Valerie Plame affair.

That's a pretty deep hole for the Bush White House to have sunk into. And the indictments are coming.

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