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Nevertheless, using your numbers, are you asserting that an Iraq pullout would have a Stalingrad-sized impact on the U.S.

Spin? Pointed head? Are you in the habit of making requests that people ignore?

By “war support,” I mean the number of people willing to accept a troop commitment of two years or more to see the mission through.

First, a caveat: Take any CBS poll with a grain of salt until you see the sample — and we don’t have one here. The weekend polling also skews the result.

Second, AP’s definition makes sense if you’re a hard-headed realist like AP, but may make no sense in interpreting a political opinion poll.

Here’s what Dem pollster Mark Mellman had to say about this back in 2005, comparing different Iraq polls:

One important difference between those questions is in the time horizon each contemplates. The ABC/Post poll is not specific, but the implication is immediate withdrawal (if we are “to avoid further casualties”). Harris talks about withdrawal in a year. That may not seem like much time to military planners, but it does to ordinary people.

The CNN/USA Today /Gallup poll provides some analytic leverage by asking how long troops should stay. Forty-four percent said less than a year, while 31 percent responded “one to two years.” Thus, 75 percent want a commitment of two years or less. Not immediate withdrawal, but hardly willing to stay for as long as it takes.

Please note: The 75% number from 2005 compared with the 72% number today.

In this context, 40% of adults wanting to stay more than a year actually may be encouraging. Better still, 58% expect to stay longer than two years. People may not like the situation in Iraq — who wouldn’t want to get most of our troops out of Iraq, under the right conditions? But they are being realistic about our commitment there — moreso than AP seems to think, anyway.

dedalus on September 17, 2007 at 11:05 PM

Yes!

Comparing American withdrawal from Iraq to the German defeat at Stalingrad would be like comparing one of John Kerry’s “wounds” to losing a leg.

I think that a majority of voters would be willing to accept another two years if they actually thought that would result in success at turning Iraq into a functioning rule of law, respect for human rights democracy, ally in the “War on Terror”, etc., but they do not think another two years would be anything more than another wasted two years and then another two years and then another two years … … … … … …

The pink lady could have denied the ad just like a great number of other nutty cause ads, but they had no choice but to publish it and since they’re part of the problem they wanted too.

General Petraeus is an man of extraordinary integrity, the only reason an ad like this was deemed necessary was that for liberals the news from Iraq is so bad that it actually threatened split in the Democratic party.

The party invested in defeat needed a big enough distraction that Democrats could hide behind it and lash out (which they did literally) at a man and a report they approved in the first place.

If they dared let the man’s report stand as the truth it was, even the America hate enablers in the MSM couldn’t have contained the damage to their paid for symbiotic politicians.

Instead of capitalizing on the obvious flaming bag of dog doo that the liberals had stepped in moronic people registered as Republicans incredibly aided the Soros bot clone army in their disgusting vilification of an American many times more deserving of respect than they are.

Congratulations should be in order the American socialist proxy party is whole and driving on towards the unthinkable.

Any American withdrawal will be viwed world-wide as a total military disaster akin to the German defeat at Stalingrad.

The Germans had more than 700,000 casualties at Stalingrad. The battle ended with the capture of the German Field Marshall Paulus and almost 100,000 German soldiers. About 90% of those soldiers didn’t survive captivity.

The analogy doesn’t work too well since General Petraeus and our soldiers aren’t in danger of being captured and we aren’t facing military attacks from forces comparable to the Allied and Soviet forces. Things might be bad for us, but there is no way in the world I’d want to trade strategic positions with the Germans in January 1943.

Actually the Democrats are quite correct in their theory that the Iraqi Government is totally incompetent. Al Qaesda, upon our disgraceful retreat, will capture the country in a matter of DAYS not weeks or months. But these fools don’t realize THAT WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO REMAIN THERE IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS–not only for the reason cited–but also because we put our sworn enemy in charge of oil reserves rivaling Saudi Arabia. How about $300 a barrel oil and a stock market collapse?–that’s just for starters. Next will be nuclear weapons training.

The next Prez will be a Dem with a Dem Congress and the Dem party will have to either finally grow up or destroy the nation.

Flip a coin.

If the Democrats are pushing a draw-down message and the Republicans are pushing a more open-ended commitment, the polls we are seeing today are going to make it a tough election for Republicans.

Maybe the Americans polled are listening to Petraeus when he says that ther are limits to what the military can do. Perhaps things would look up if Bush and the State Department put more financial and political pressure on Maliki. Until the basic agreements of government are made among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurd groups Iraq is likely to consume our military resources, and that is going to require the Republican candidates to do a lot of work with the American people.

The problem is getting the funding.

amerpundit on September 17, 2007 at 9:34 PM

Yes, funding is always the problem. But with all the negative spin for four years, they have yet to do it. And it is my belief they won’t. polls like this, and much worse, have been out there for years, both when the repubs had control, and when the dems had control. Heck, the dems even say that it was their stance on the war that got them the majority! And how do they try to actualize that…by trying to dictate troop levels! That’s absurd! If they had the kind of backing these polls claim they have, then they would just go for the whole sha-bang and de-fund the war. But they haven’t…and they won’t. two weeks into the war, when the sandstorms hit our troops for the first time, Kennedy waddled up to the first mic. he could find and spoke the ‘Q’ word for the first time. Since then, for four years, there has been a never ending narrative being hammered into the heads of Americans. Every poll says the same thing that the media is reporting, which is the same thing the Dems are trying to run on. And yet…no de-funding. I don’t see anything in the future, especially a simple round of polling, that will change our posture in Iraq.

the american public dosen’t seem to like bigmouths cutting down soldiers in uniform or at least has not liked it in the past.

C

Weight of Glory on September 17, 2007 at 9:31 PM

The problem is getting the funding.

By “war support,” I mean the number of people willing to accept a troop commitment of two years or more to see the mission through.

Aren’t polls like this useless? Who knows what will be going on in 2 years? Despite many in congress trying to play both sides, you defacto support the war unless you demand troop withdrawls immediatly.

So when they hear Petraeus testify that the surge is working, they don’t believe it, even though it’s true. At this point, Jesus Christ himself could come down to tell them it’s working, and they’d say “But I saw the commercial on tv!”.

Remember that George C. Scott mock-up a while back. “These people wouldn’t know a real threat to their freedom, unless it interrupted the power supply to their XBox or killed a half-a-million people”. It’s sad, but true.