Zogby’s Bogus Poll on U.S. Military in Iraq
Tim Kane deserves an award for exposing the phoney baloney ‘polling’ that’s supposedly showing that “according to a recent Zogby poll, 72 percent of U.S. troops say it’s time to withdraw from Iraq. Another stunner is that only three in five soldiers in Iraq have a clear sense of the mission. Ouch!” Unfortunately for Mr. Zogby, Tim Kane knows a bit about polling himself. Here’s part of his fisking:
For example, the widespread finding that three in four soldiers think the United States should withdraw from Iraq within a year has only one option for troops who think otherwise: stay indefinitely. This infamous question asks, “How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?” But the first three answers are not phrased in terms of staying, they are phrased “withdraw…,” “withdraw…” and “withdraw… .” Where are the options for troops who think the United States should stay for “one to two years” or “two to five years”? Zogby omits such nuance. It’s stay or go. Now or never.
That’s hardly honest polling. That hardly gives soldiers the opportunity to say what’s on their mind. It tries pigeon-holing people to get the desired results. That’s known as push-polling back here in the states. That wasn’t the only flaw Kane found:
This may seem like nitpicking, but if half a man’s family say they want “chicken” for dinner, and he reports those votes as “nonvegetarian,” he is not exactly being honest. In just this way, the poll asked the soldiers to rate seven different “reasons for the Iraq invasion.” It is a question about prewar justification, not the postwar occupation. Yet Zogby described their answers as a description of “the U.S. mission.” If that’s the question he wanted to ask, he should have asked it that way. Polling is a science. Words matter.
Here’s what Rush uncovered about who sponsored the poll:
RUSH: Le Moyne College funded the poll in Stars and Stripes that found that 73% of the troops think we ought to get out of Iraq in a year, or less. We have also learned that the pollster himself, John Zogby, is a graduate of Le Moyne College, who I think also attended Syracuse. It turns out that Zogby is now a trustee at Le Moyne and got its alumni award in 2000. We can make a pretty good George Soros commercial out of this. So you’ve got Le Moyne College with anti-war roots back to the guy who first burned his draft card, when it was a felony in ‘65, all the way up to this poll with one of its own trustees being paid by the school to do the poll, of which he was given the alumni award in 2000.
Here’s what the next caller told Rush:
Well, my husband is in Landstuhl, Germany [Regional Medical Center], and I am so sick and tired of hearing about all these things that are not true. I’m sick of polls; I’m sick of people that make stupid polls. My husband is in Landstuhl, Germany, having knee surgery. All of the wounded guys that can and want to go back, he did an informal poll and 90% of the guys he talked to can’t wait to get back and finish the job. They’re so sick of the… Yyu don’t know how mad I am. It makes me crazy.
RUSH: I’m glad you said that. That’s right, they’ve done the same thing at Walter Reed and at Bethesda, and I’ve even met some of these men. National Review, it comes up again. National Review’s 50th anniversary bash last fall was in Washington, and some of these special guests were war vets that had been temporarily let out of Walter Reed and Bethesda that night to come and be honored. Oh, they were eager to get back. They didn’t fit the model of this poll at all.
CALLER: My kids are sacrificing. My husband’s been gone since June, so my kid sacrifices for nothing, according to these idiots? I don’t think so.
RUSH: That’s what they want people to think.
CALLER: Well, you know what? They’re wrong. They’re totally, totally wrong, and they’re doing a big disservice to all these people. My husband is 47 years old. You know? I mean, come on! He has a life. He’s not black. He has a career. He’s even Jewish.
RUSH: And he volunteered.
CALLER: And he volunteered, and he’s been in the military — he’s a Reservist but he’s been in 12 years, and I am sick to death of hearing all this nonsense and I wouldn’t let him reenlist if Kerry had become president because I don’t trust that man as far as you could throw him. I am fed up.
RUSH: I think you’re speaking for a lot of Americans who are also fed up with the constant barrage that they’re hearing about this, and I’m so glad you called and shared your passion.
CALLER: I am so glad that I got to talk to you because my husband is going to go a long way towards making him better.
RUSH: Well, you give him our thanks and our respect and love. Will you do that?
CALLER: I will do that a hundred percent. You have a great one.
Then came another impassioned caller:
Dick in Kalamazoo, Michigan, thanks for waiting, I’m glad you called.
CALLER: Hey, so am I. Thanks, Rush. Listen I’m not part of the disenfranchised base that was referred to earlier. As I recall George W. Bush laying this out originally, he talked specifically about his reasons. He talked about the threat. Everybody hangs on the weapons of mass destruction. They forget he talked about the statesman-like theories of changing that region because it festers and it breeds the trouble that we’ve had.
RUSH: He also said it was not going to be easy–
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: — and it was going to take a long time.
CALLER: He absolutely is on track and has been consistent with everything he said at the beginning. He is a statesman that makes decisions on core values and American values, which is really rare. But I want to caution the American people if they’re trying to draw similarities to Vietnam, only if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. They once talked us out of engagement in Vietnam for which they will never get a thank you card from the South Vietnamese people. But I want them to think this time that if they’re successful in talking us into disengaging this time, it’s not going to be another people that falls behind the Iron Curtain, so to speak; it’s going to be us. It’s always been a challenge is when to engage. You go back to Patrick Henry’s speech, which we know of that famous phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You could do a service to your readers and post the whole thing on your website, because, if you read through that, it is a powerful statement and a powerful argument saying, “What are you people thinking of? Why do you have your heads in the sand? Look what’s going on. It’s now. It’s already begun.” And I thank God George Bush is president, and to the lady who called before me, I would offer that I have a tremendous amount of friends that are Vietnam veterans. I’m a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, and I know 12 in my little town, nine of whom tried to join up again when this started. That’s the kind of sentiment that’s out there, and I would go right now if I could.
RUSH: God bless you, sir. Two calls in a row here who are grand slams. There’s nothing I could add to this. You just did a great job. Thank you.
I was listening to the show when Rush took those calls and I’ve gotta tell you, those callers jolted me. As Rush said, they were “grand slam calls”. These callers were passionate, they were angry, they were disgusted with the phoney baloney polling.
Let me add another note to this discussion: When John Murtha cites polls about 80% of the Iraqis want us out and “47% percent of Iraqis think it’s ok to kill American troops”, he’s quoting ‘polling’ similar to this. They aren’t rooted in facts. They’re rooted in push-polling that gives ‘political cover’ for jackasses like Murtha so they can spew their lies. And make no mistake about it. Murtha’s been lying since before Christmas.
He can’t believe that American soldiers are “living hand to mouth.” He can’t believe that there’s truly a civil war going on there. He can’t believe that soldiers “don’t want to be there.” He can’t believe that because people have been telling him otherwise in very public places, like his town hall meeting with Jim Moran, where a soldier told him that his presentation was utter nonsense and didn’t represent the thinking of the people he served with. Moran, with his tail between his legs, didn’t attempt commenting on it, simply saying “I guess he chose to make a comment and not ask a question.”
I’ll give you readers a bit of advice, which I don’t often do. Ignore these polls because they aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They’re push-polls that are designed to create movement towards a liberal’s political agenda. They aren’t remotely close to real polling.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing