WASHINGTON — Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President George W. Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him.
Democrats view the November elections that gave them control of Congress as a mandate to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq. They are backed by evidence; election exit poll surveys by The Associated Press and television networks found 55 percent saying the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq.
Bush says Democrats have it all wrong: the public does not want the troops pulled out — they want to give the military more support in its mission.
"Last November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted a change in our strategy in Iraq," he said April 24, ahead of a veto showdown with congressional Democrats over their desire to legislation a troop withdrawal timeline. "I listened. Today, General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course."
Increasingly isolated on a war that is going badly, Bush has presented his alternative reality in other ways, too. He expresses understanding for the public's dismay over the unrelenting sectarian violence and American losses that have passed 3,400, but then asserts that the public's solution matches his.
"A lot of Americans want to know, you know, when?" he said at a Rose Garden news conference Thursday. "When are you going to win?"
Also in that session, Bush said: "I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, 'Get out, you know, it's just not worth it. Let's just leave.' I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well."
In fact, polls show Americans do not disagree, and that leaving — not winning — is their main goal.
In one released Friday by CBS and the New York Times, 63 percent supported a troop withdrawal timetable of sometime next year. Another earlier this month from USA Today and Gallup found 59 percent backing a withdrawal deadline that the U.S. should stick to no matter what is happening in Iraq.
Bush aides say poll questions are asked so many ways, and often so imprecisely, that it is impossible to conclude that most Americans really want to get out. Failure, Bush says, is not what the public wants — they just do not fully understand that that is just what they will get if troops are pulled out before the Iraqi government is capable of keeping the country stable on its own.
Seeking to turn up the heat on this argument, Bush has relied lately on an al-Qaida mantra. Terrorists remain dangerous, and fighting them in Iraq is key to neutralizing the threat, he says. "It's hard for some Americans to see that, I fully understand it," Bush said. "I see it clearly."
Independent pollster Andrew Kohut said of the White House view: "I don't see what they're talking about."
"They want to know when American troops are going to leave," Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, said of the public. "They certainly want to win. But their hopes have been dashed."
Kohut has found it notable that there is such a consensus in poll findings.
"When the public hasn't made up its mind or hasn't thought about things, there's a lot of variation in the polls," he said. "But there's a fair amount of agreement now."
The president did not used to try to co-opt polling for his benefit. He just said he ignored it.
This is just amazing! We have a president who is delusional. When you look at the CBS News poll, the American public are not saying that they want the U.S. to win the war in Iraq, but rather that 76 percent--that is three-quarters of Americans--say that the war is going badly for the U.S. Not only that, but 64 percent of Americans support withdrawal timetables for the U.S. getting out of Iraq, 71 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq, and 61 percent of Americans say that we should never have invaded Iraq. You can find a wealth of polling data on Iraq through the Polling Report. The American public want the troops withdrawn out of Iraq. They want benchmarks for success. They want withdrawal timetables. They do not want the same old, open-ended, blank check commitment that the Bush White House is insisting on. And now we have President Bush claiming that the polling data supports his claim that the American public wants the U.S. to win the war in Iraq, rather than leave? I would certainly be curious to see what polling data the administration is cherry-picking in order to support this delusional claim.
I went back through the Iraq polls on The Polling Report, and found some interesting data the administration could cherry-pick to support their claims. According to this May 15-16 Fox News poll, 33 percent of Americans surveyed say that the U.S. "can still be successful in Iraq," 31 percent of Americans say that the U.S. "is losing but has not lost" the war in Iraq, and 26 percent of Americans "has lost the war in Iraq." There is also a May 4-6 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll which asks "Do you think that the U.S. war in Iraq is lost, or don't you think so?" The results of this single question are 41 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. war in Iraq is lost, 55 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. war in Iraq is not lost, and 4 percent have no opinion. Now these are minor survey questions here. The reason I included them here is to show just how the Bush administration may be cherry-picking the opinion polls to support their own delusional claims, while ignoring the more important public opinion results regarding benchmarks, timetables, or even Bush's own handling of Iraq. Of course, this is what I could find while I was writing this post. It is even more likely that President Bush is making these outrageous claims without providing any supporting data to back up these claims--it is all just more PR-spin provided by the Bush White House.
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