Much has been made of the public opinion shift against the US occupation of Iraq. It is said that after 2 ½ years, the American public is finally turning against the war. In 2004, CBS News
ran a convincing story detailing the shifts in public opinion concerning the war, replete with graphs and explanations of the graphs. Notice that the earliest polling dates are after the war has begun in March 2003. This is important becausesupport for war tends to increase once it begins regardless of prior opinion . This is something that CBS and other news agencies know. So they trot out “3/2003” as if we are too stupid to remember when the war began. This technique works to create the sense that the public was for the war up until recently. And the recent shift will, of course, be attributed to unwise decision-making and overall mismanagement of the situation. The Washington Post tries its hand at the game, using a similar tactic,
Over the past two years, Americans rallied around Bush in the initial stages of the war but grew increasingly disillusioned as stepped-up insurgent attacks a year ago turned the conflict bloodier.explaining the shift as due to an increased insurgency, and more importatly, framing public opinion as having started out for, and only recently turning against, the war.
Gallup reported that in February 2003 67% of the American public opposed an invasion without UN sanction.
Omitting February’s public opinion poll results obscures the intense propaganda campaign being waged during that crucial period at the close of 2002 up until the invasion in March 2003. It presents a picture of the American public as having been misled, of having believed in the need to invade Iraq when the facts clearly show this to be untrue.
The public was actually against the war. The president and the Congress, the ones who actually decide if we go to war, were for the war. And all this statistical gaming is but political cover for the ruling class, hopefully obscuring the obvious: that America is a plutocracy where the will of the people is completely irrelevant if cover can be run by corporate nooz entities for the political operatives they own.
But it does work. If one looks around, plenty of blogs can be found repeating the propaganda line that says we were all tricked by Bush and his cabal but now public opinion is finally shifting.
The most appalling thing is how utterly stupid these people must think the American public is to keep pulling these tricks. How contemptuous they are of the American people and democracy.
