This quibble neither supports nor undermines any of Golden Boy's points about Muslims, but he seems to be a little confused, misguided, or overly suspicious of survey research organizations, a.k.a. pollsters.

It's just simply not true that the questionnaire results were attached to a name and address. The survey research community in the U.S.A. is a quite small community (everybody's one or two degrees of separation away from George Gallup), and surprisingly ethical. If a survey research company takes your name and address and compensates you for your time, that data (and your phone number) isn't combined with the database of questionnaire results. Nor is whether you declined to give your name and address combined with the questionnaire results.

A respondent might not believe the assurance of anonymity. And there's no such assurance with election canvassing. And a dishonest canvassing operation might represent itself as survey research. (Usually, in that case, the wording of the questions makes it obvious that it's a canvass or a "push poll" and not a real poll.)

25% of the respondents who completed this particular survey declined to provide their name and address, and therefore didn't receive a completion incentive payment. Their only incentive was the pleasure of being asked their opinion and of giving it. (And it's a minor mystery of survey research, why that incentive works so effectively, even with long, tedious questionnaires about detergent preferences, but it does work.)

Anyway, my point, and I did have one, is that there's no way of crosstabbing between providing a name and address, and any of the answers on the questionnaire.

It wasn't WEST Paterson and it wasn't thousands of people but there were a few people who did seem to be celebrating in SOUTH Paterson on 9/11.

That was ugly and stupid, but it wasn't deeply representative of the neighborhood, where I can still enjoy good food from good peaceful people such as those at the "Halal Burrito" place.

A sabra friend of mine was in Hoboken on the morning of 9/11 and -- though absolutely NOT celebrating the dark cloud across the river -- this sabra did react immediately by talking about what she saw as a silver lining, which was that the US would feel greater solidarity with Israel. That was ugly, too, but there was some truth in it.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,830348-2,00.html

How is the war actually going? Measured against the desperate situation that faced General Maxwell Taylor on a fact-finding mission for the President 19 months ago, there is room for qualified optimism. When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara returned from a conference with service chiefs in Pearl Harbor last week, the Pentagon said "the corner has definitely been turned toward victory." No one was setting any timetable, but U.S. military chiefs and South Viet Nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem say that the war should be won "within three years." There are many soldiers in South Viet Nam who consider this wildly optimistic; some believe that the war may never be won. But almost everyone agrees that things have improved.
- - Time Magazine, Friday, May 17, 1963

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,941057-1,00.html

Nonetheless, a note of optimism permeated the conference. "There are many signs that we are at a favorable turning point," the President said at the outset. That theme was elaborated in detail as U.S. and South Vietnamese officials met on Nimitz Hill, the U.S. naval headquarters overlooking the Philippine Sea. Also in clear view from the spacious verandas on the Hill was a tangible reminder of the larger stakes — and risks—in the Viet Nam war: the Soviet trawler Gidrofon, laden with electronic snooping gear, lying just beyond the three-mile limit in order to monitor U.S. B-52 flights to Viet Nam and track the six Polaris subs based at Guam.

The military situation in Viet Nam gave ample cause for confidence. South Viet Nam's Premier Nguyen Cao Ky said that the Communist forces in his country are "on the run" and pictured the supply system in the North as "in near paralysis."
- - Time Magazine, Friday, March 31, 1967

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839949-1,00.html

"Progress" in Viet Nam is a relative and fragile thing at best. But within limits, a prognosis of progress seems more valid than at any time since the U.S. arrived.

The history of the war is all too painfully graven in false optimism. Again and again, U.S. hopes have been raised by officials armed with gleaming statistics and pollyanna rhetoric. First the U.S. "turned the corner" in Viet Nam; then there was "light at the end of the tunnel," "the enemy was on the run," and the attrition rates, the kill ratios, and all the other jargon of victory rolled on and on. Since they have been proved wrong so often in the past, U.S. experts are careful not to parade their latest positive assessments; indeed, they almost tend to conceal them. But those currently in charge of the war in the field are convinced that "the curve is up" at last.
- - Time Magazine, Friday, March 28, 1969

http://cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/24/bush

Bush warns of heavy fighting in Iraq this summer

2:20 p.m. EDT, May 24, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As Congress was poised to approve money for U.S. forces in Iraq on Thursday, President Bush warned Americans to expect "heavy fighting" this summer during a critical time in his war strategy.

Answering reporters' questions at a White House news conference, Bush said the developments would occur once U.S. military reinforcements are in place in mid-June.

"We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties," Bush said . . .

- - CNN.com, reporting on today's press conference, which was the president's second (hey, lets not overdo it) press conference in 2007.