Smasharoo wrote:
I find it intresting that I didn't mention an oppinion on the results of the poll (Other than that Kurds love the US) yet you respond to an imaginary one.
Eh? What response did I give to you Smash? I was responding to shadow who claimed that 90% of Iraqi's wanted the US to leave. I said it was closer to 92%, but that the question that derived that result was questionable.
You piped in with those other poll results. Which *also* don't confirm what Shadow was trying to say.
Not sure what your point is then Smash. So you agree that shadow's 90% figure is inaccurate, right? That's all I was saying.
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Can we agree to agree that the majority of Iraqis want the US to leave immediately, or did you want to argue the opposite with absolutely no evidence?
My problem is that you (ok. the polls you're quoting) are treating a very broad subject with incredibly limited options. For example. The poll you showed only gave two choices: a) leave immediately (next few months), and b) stay longer.
Ok. How much longer is "staying longer"? A year? 2 years? Forever? How long is "a few months"? Is that the time until they *start* leaving? Or the time until they are completely gone? There's a hell of a lot of ambiquity in this apparently "straighforward" poll.
Why not provide three catagories instead? a) Coalition begin leaving right now, and complete their withdrawal as soon as physically possible regardless of other conditions, b) Coalition forces stay until the elected government can fully take over the job of securing the country, but must leave once that has occured, and c) Coalition forces remain even after that government has taken control to assist with ongoing security (ie: long term).
By giving only two options, it comes down to how any given Iraqi citizen views those options. If he's afraid that by taking option "b" (stay longer), he's essentially voting to allow the coalition forces to remain indefinately, then he's going to be a lot more likely to pick option a, doubly so if he feels that in a "few months" the elected Iraqi government will be able to take up the task of securing the nation. Maybe he's interpreting option "a" as "in a few months, after the Iraqi constitution has been ratified and Iraqi security forces take full control, we'll begin removing coalition forces and continue doing so over time from then on".
The problem is that the simplicity of the poll questions leave a lot of room for interpretation. It's an absolute either way, and that's always going to cause exagerrated results. By not including any middle option, they (obviously) remove the more moderate (and presumably more popular) "stay until they aren't needed anymore" option. Amazingly enough, that's the current criteria for withdrawal of US troops at this time. One has to wonder why the pool does not actually list those criteria and ask how many Iraqi's support it. Isn't that just a little bit strange?
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Or wait, that old stand by "there's no way to know"?
No. There are ways to know. But, strangely, I've yet to see a single published poll that actually asked the Iraqi's what they thought of the actual conditions of coalition withdrawal in Iraq. If they'd ask that question, and surround it with reasonable alternatives (or perhaps even a range of alternatives), we'd get far more accurate results and a much better picture of what the average Iraqi actually wants. So there are ways to know. But the polls we've seen so far aren't even close to telling us.
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I could really care less, actually. I have nothing invested in it, but state your position allready. Is it that most Iraqis want the US to stay?
Hah. And you repeat the "all or nothing" concept yourself. Isn't there a middle ground between "leaving immediately" and the open ended "stay"? Why not actually *state* that, instead of being deliberately vague? "Stay longer" doesn't say how long "longer" is. Iraqi's might want us to "stay longer", if "longer" is defined as only long enough to ensure that Iraqi police and military can keep the country in one piece. Many might not want us to "stay longer", if "longer" is defined as staying for years and years regardless of other developments. Until we recognize that there is a middle ground and that most people are going to attach conditions to things (or want to anyway), we're not going to get very accurate poll results.