Pay no attention to the little poll behind the curtain

Pay no attention to the little poll behind the curtain

Daniel Radosh

"Do the troops feel supported by this House resolution? There are no opinion polls of military and civilian workers in Iraq, but two comments have come to my attention. One is a letter to the editor of The Washington Times from John McFarlane, a military trainer for Northrop-Grumman Technical Services in Elizabethtown, Ky. McFarlane writes that he has just returned from Iraq "after coming out of retirement to go there, I can tell you that the greatest fear of the young service members over there is that the American public will fail to pursue total victory and will leave early, thereby wasting their battle buddies' life and blood. They feel pain every time somebody pays lip service to his or her conscience with the line: 'support the troops, but not the policy.' (They) know they are the policy and that you should feel shame if you as an American would commit them to anything less than total victory." �Cal Thomas, Feb 20 2007 [emphasis added]

"An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.... The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure." �Zogby, Feb. 28, 2006