"As for polls. That information is only as good as the pollster who asks the questions, the way the question is asked, and the intent of the person selected who answers the poll." (grampster in an earlier post.)
This is a perfect example of people accepting anecdotal evidence because it comports with their views, not unlike when anti-gunners say "well I know a crook who says he gets all kinds of guns at gun shows", and then refuse to look at statistics that say otherwise.
If the anecdotes are true, you'd think that at least one study would confirm them. Where is it?
I'm wondering why you give such great credibility to polls and absolutely none to people who have also been in-country in a variety of occupations, other than pollsters. Polls are nothing more than anecdotal information as well, with just as much potential bias. For all your attempts at what you seem to believe is objectivity, it usually winds up instead as a self defeating prophesy. You are amusing sir or madam, from time to time, but woefully predictable.
My point isn't that polls are infallible-it's that surely at least the supporters of this war would have an interest in shooting down the polls and coming up with polls of their own that demonstrate what they believe to be the truth.
Polls are not anecdotal, they are an attempt to measure data about people's opinions using statistical methods. And yes, they do have the potential for bias-but how come there's not a single poll out there that indicates something other than a vast majority of Iraqis opposing the presence of U.S. troops, if it's just bias that yields that answer?
If there is actually a shred of evidence that a majority of Iraqis support the U.S. presence in Iraq, how come the defense department, George Bush, the Republican party members that are campaigning on the war like John McCain, the legions of think tanks that support the war, the alphabet soup of agencies and organizations (both pro war and anti-war), and all of the news services or polling services, of whatever side of the political aisle, have not come up with a number or a study to support the claim that all those other polls are wrong?
Seriously, don't you find that odd if nothing else? Are all the supporters of the Iraq war part of the conspiracy to convince America that Iraqis don't want us there using biased studies too, or are they just not interested in doing any reports or polls on what Iraqis believe?
