Meanwhile in Baghdad...
Lost in the O'Connor retirement news frenzy is a fascinating story broken by Dick Keil and Janine Zacharia of Bloomberg News: the State Department's polling not on Iraq, but in Iraq -- and the results are as mixed as those in the US.
A majority of Iraqis oppose having foreign troops in their country and feel less safe with these troops in their neighborhoods. Yet a majority also says that they want the troops to stay until a permanent government is elected.
Other findings include: majorities in every region of Iraq except Tikrit (Saddam's home city) thought that the troops came to Iraq with good intentions. Most Iraqis have confidence in the Iraqi Police, National Guard, and Army, and feel safer with them patrolling the streets. Yet, in Sunni areas -- like Tikrit -- support for the insurgency is relatively strong. The poll comprised 1,983 face-to-face interviews with Iraqis over 18 from all segments of the society and in 15 cities across the country, and was conducted March 15 to 22.
At one level, this data bolsters some of the arguments made by Ken Pollack in the Times today: we need to take time to train the Iraqi forces, work on making everyday Iraqis feel safe throughout the country, and can't leave until that is accomplished -- despite the opposition there or here.
At another level, there's the question of the poll itself. According to Zacharia (formerly the Jerusalem Post's DC correspondent) and Keil, this is the fourth such poll State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research commissioned since October 2004. Is this standard intelligence gathering? Even if it is, it seems odd that a poll is what passes for intel; I would hope that real-life reports from the ground are also in the mix. Finally, who conducts these polls? BNIR itself -- or was an independent firm used, and if so, which GOP firm got the deal?
Comments (12)
we need to take time to train the Iraqi forces, work on making everyday Iraqis feel safe throughout the country, and can't leave until that is accomplished -- despite the opposition there or here.
If this is Mr. Pollack's position we will be there indefinitely. No way the Sunni's will ever feel safe with the Kurds and Shi'a in power. The same Kurds and Shi'a that tortured and killed by Saddam and his Sunni supporters for all those years.
July 1, 2005 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
C'mon, Ken. You cannot take a poll conducted by State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research seriously. What are you trying to peddle here?
July 1, 2005 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is this standard intelligence gathering?
Huh???
How else does Mr. Pollack propose that we understand what ordinary Iraqis are thinking?
Moreover, are the results surprising at all? The results are frankly not very different than most other polls we've seen of Iraqis for the past year or so.
July 1, 2005 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
>>>> we need to take time to train the Iraqi forces
---- enough with this. Trained Iraqis keep on defecting to the insurgency. If you give them better weapons, they will sell them to the insurgency. More integration with the US forces makes them sell our guys out to the insurgents.
Why? because the people who join the army are the most nationalist Iraqis around. Not unlike the USA!
Somehow you guys think the Iraqis can be "trained" into being more faithful to the USA than they are to their own country. This is like the Palestinians whose primary job is supposed to be killing other Palestinians for the Israelis.
It will never work. If it did, you would have Saudi Arabia all over again, with an oppressive, totalitarian police state that does first what the USA wants. Isn't that what got us into this trouble back a few years? Here comes Mohammed Atta, Iraqi version.
July 1, 2005 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we would be fools to believe anything the administration passes out today. So, why even discuss that poll? We just don't know what the "average" Iraqi thinks, or even if there is such a person as an average Iraqi.
We cannot possibly train all of the Iraqi military and expect them to refrain from stabbing us in the back. A far, far better course of action would be to train a small number of Iraqis in military techniques, and let them train a larger number of Iraqis, who then can train a much larger number, etc. Of course by then we sure as Hell better be out of Iraq, because they will be training to repel invaders, which is us.
July 1, 2005 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ken's being played for fools and, seemingly, enjoying the part. Mind boggling how far naivete can get you these days.
July 1, 2005 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have this feeling that the whole Iraq debacle is unfortunatley going to get completely forgotten in the next few weeks- right at the point when we seriously need to be talking about what the best strategy is over there.
July 2, 2005 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
That might be a great way to conduct a Kinsey poll, but I have my doubts about whether any sane Iraqi would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to a self-admitted State Dept. agent. It's especially hard to imagine anyone daring to bad-mouth the new Iraqi military forces. From every report I've read, that would be a little like living in Little Iraly in the 1940s and telling your friendly pollster that your local Famiglia members were a bunch of thugs and perverts.
July 2, 2005 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
For those of us who may never have heard of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, why should we particularly mistrust its polling?
July 2, 2005 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Were those pollsters escorted by US Military and if so, would that not influence the results?
July 3, 2005 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
since there are hundreds of Iraqi blogs available to everyone online.
July 3, 2005 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
A poll?
In Iraq?
In face-to-face interviews?
From "all segments of society?"
Who do these people think they are kidding?
Who would be naive enough to believe them?
Let's imagine you are an Iraqi, from any segment of society.
Your country had just been overrun by an invading force, you are now under foreign occupation, most of your homeland's infrastructure is in tatters, clean water and electricity are spotty at best, somewhere between a quarter and a half (who really knows) of your fellow Iraqis are unemployed, the streets are full of soldiers, bombs are going off daily, members of the new government sponsored by the invaders are being regularly killed off, in most cities you can not drive anywhere without encountering roadblocks and checkpoints, most likely a member of your family or someone you know or at the very least a friend of a friend has had their home invaded at night and perhaps they have been dragged off for questioning to a facility where everyone knows torture is going on, and you are going to give honest answers to a poll being conducted by that very occupying force? In "face to face" interviews?
Give me a break.
July 6, 2005 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink