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Four Out Of Five Soldiers Asked Support Obama

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ABC's Martha Raddatz asked American soldiers in Iraq what issues are most important to them when looking at the presidential candidates.


Pulling out of Iraq, better relations with rogue nations like Iran, shorter deployments, the economy and education were top on the list.



Comments (7)

As much as I'd like to believe it, I'm more than a little skeptical about her polling methods. The armed services have gone Republican so consistently that even 3 out of 5 would be hard to believe.

Maybe there was a selection bias going on, but regardless of the reason, I doubt that her sample is representative of the military.

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Why do you have to lie, distort and obfuscate in order to support your candidate? Deliberately misleading people is wrong. It's immoral, it's unethical. Did no one ever teach you that?

Why do you have to throw charges around without backing them up with evidence?

Tell us the lies, distortions and obfuscations -- it's immoral, unethical and just plain lazy to cast the first stones without doing so.

There's nothing wrong with Connie's post, but it could use a few details. Yes, most of the soldiers in the ABC story were for Obama.

An interesting detail: "Only moments before speaking with ABC News, the troops had been listening to Vice President Dick Cheney give a rousing speech, but it didn't change their political preference."

ABC assumes that Cheney didn't change their preference. I bet, in a way, he did.

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I reported what ABC reported-- I lied about nothing.

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You made it appear as though there was some sort of poll taken whose results were 4 out of 5 soldiers support Obama. Whether you qualify it with a "asked" is immaterial to the impression you were trying to give your readers. It is meaningless, it is not empirical evidence, it is not even anecdotal evidence of anything. How do you know that the reporter didn't ask 100 soldiers and reported only those willing to give their names, or only the names of those she agreed with, or only those she thought gave quotable statements that were coherent? You have no idea as to the context, the time, the number of soldiers questioned, if the reporter is reliable, what the motivations of the soldiers were in answering the reporter's questions and who authorized their speaking with a reporter. It's the equivalent of saying 9 out of 10 dentists recommend using Trident chewing gum - it is as meaningless as it is misleading.

Not only is your blog entry misleading, it is irresponsible and unethical to report stories to your readers of which you either do not understand or choose not to understand. You have consistently posted irresponsible rumours, smears and conjectures on your part with headlines that are outrageous and misleading to the readers.

Now I am willing to concede that this is Drudge's world and I just live in it, but I will not concede my right to point out the immorality of such blogging entries. You have a responsiblity to get it right, don't you understand that?

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Thanks Bat Guano for supporting my post.

I'm not skeptical at all because I have read this and heard this elsewhere, and some time back, as a matter of fact.

I'm glad to see this because this was my understanding.

Now everyone is going to ask me for links and I wish I had them - I started hearing this months ago and now I can't even remember where I started hearing it. I'm sorry. But that's exactly why I was glad to see this.

My credibility or lack thereof is on display here since I can't back it up - so it's anecdotal. It's up to the jury what weight they want to give this.

Personally, this thrills me silly because it supports what I had been hearing.

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