These polls are remarkable because the majority wishes to pull out of Iraq despite all of Gen. Petraeus's best efforts at propaganda, and despite the media's gross failure to report, in any meaningful way, the real situation on the ground in Iraq.

What would those numbers be if we had more reporters who actually were on the ground in Iraq and told it like it is, instead of, say, "reporters" like Mara Liasson and her Fox friends?

(Check out Patrick Cockburn's work, for an example of real reporting. Go to the Independent, www.independent.co.uk and do a search on his name.)

sometimes they are changed for the better. most times not. War is hell. The army/marines train and prepare you for hell. That changes men forever. be careful what you wish for gop'ers. Unless your ready to lose you sons/daughters/brothers/cousins/ What comes back is not the same person. Ever.

"PINEHURST, N.C. A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war has died of an apparent overdose, police said.

Joseph Patrick Dwyer died last week at a hospital in Pinehurst, according to the Boles Funeral Home. He was 31. The photograph, taken in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer became a symbol of heroism.

His mother said the military could have done more to help with post-traumatic stress. “He just couldn’t get over the war,” Maureen Dwyer said. “He just couldn’t do it. Just wasn’t Joseph. Joseph never came home.”

"

I don't care much about whatever line you're pushing, except to note that Sen. McCain, as the Republican presidential candidate, is now saying, five years after the takedown of Baghdad, that Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror."

Maybe the "American people" don't want to hear any of this. Out of sight, out of mind, as you say. Right. Keep shopping. Buy a new yellow ribbon magnet for your car.

However, two or three years ago, Sen. McCain was quite critical of what was, and was not, going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the time, he questioned, bluntly, the notion that the United States, having taken down the Taliban - before the Iraq operation - would allow "sanctuary" for bin Laden and his followers in the Pakistan frontier.

Things have regressed in Afghanistan while we've been fighting on the "central front," such that today it is not certain if we can reinforce troops there.

But let's not think about it.

The polling data that you seem to find so persuasive are really just another example of polling ambiguity. Are you confident that you know what the responses would be had the question not included "even if it takes four years or more," and had instead been something like: "Do you believe that President Obama should stick to his campaign promise to bring most of the troops home from Iraq within the next sixteen months, or should the U.S. wait until Iraq is relatively stable now that the best assessment of the facts on the ground is that doing so will mean that withdrawal will take 24 months?" I simply do not find Liasson's assertion that the American people would prefer their commander in chief to choose policy guided by the best current assessment of the facts over policy locked-in by campaign promises to be all that unreasonable, even if the current polling data neither unequivocally support or contradict that assertion.

Why I don't send them money anymore. NPR has become nothing more that another Propaganda Trumpet, and a POOR ONE at that.

Putting aside the trust issue regarding Bush and Obama, you seem to think that a majority of the american people will be more guided by "facts on the ground" than by their desire to simply get out, regardless of "facts on the ground".

Is that a fair summary of your belief?

Liasson:

"Well, of course he's not going to just stick to some campaign promise of 16 months. He's going to look at the facts on the ground...

Well, that's what the American people want a commander in chief to do. That might not be what his left-wing base does."

I read Liasson here as saying that the American people want Obama to look at facts on the ground. Now, I take your point on the contradictory responses to the polls. The problem is she has no basis to reduce, at a very generous estimate half the American people, to "[Obama's] left wing base". The fact is at least half, most likely more, of American citizens want us out of Iraq, despite the pro-war propaganda telling us all how great Iraq is now (when all reliable sources say that this is basically just a lull in the fighting -- see Juan Cole's blog for real info on Iraq).

Now, if the American people really knew the situation in Iraq, e.g., that civil war has been ongoing for quite some time and that we are basically paying many Sunnis not to attack us (and many more latest and greatest facts about the current state of our war in Iraq), do you think those numbers would rise or fall? If Ms Liasson was truly trying to gauge the will of the American people, shouldn't she take into account the fact that so many Americans do not know what the f_ck is going on there (largely due to propaganda spewed by her and her ilk)?

We don't have to agree on all the numbers to see her reductionist arguments as what they are. Mara Liasson is a liar paid by fox to smear the "left" and minimize opposition to the war in Iraq.

Exactly the point - I have noted this as well.

Obama carefully limits withdrawal to combat troops - that fits with the DLC deployment "over the horizon" strategy, which really is no different than McCain permanent occupation.

The 16 v. 12 month timetables and "conditions on the ground" rationales are just diversions.

Permanent military bases are under construction or already build.

The Bhagdad giant US "embassy" is a provocation.

Control over oil production and distribution is being privatized.

A "Status of forces" agreement are being negotiated for long term occupation.

Pelosi/Reid controlled Congress just appropriated the lock in funding for all this.