Daily Archives: 18 Sep 04

Far graver than Vietnam

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“Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale“, says Sidney Blumenthal.

“‘Bring them on!’ President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is ‘winning’ in Iraq. ‘Our strategy is succeeding,’ he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But, according to the US military’s leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush’s war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: ‘Bush hasn’t found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it’s worse, he’s lost on that front. That he’s going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It’s lost.’ He adds: ‘Right now, the course we’re on, we’re achieving Bin Laden’s ends.'” (Guardian.UK)

Why You Should Ignore The Polls

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The Left Coaster believes that Gallup greatly oversamples the Republican component of its poll participants, because of an unwavering assumption that a greater percentage of those turning out to vote will be Republicans than Democrats.

And Jimmy Breslin tells you you might as well make up the poll results yourself for all they are worth, making much of the fact that those will cellular phones instead of landlines are never polled by current methodologies, which means younger voters are disproportionately ignored. (NewsDay)

Pointed to by a reader in the comments, this site amplifies on Breslin’s point, mentioning VoIP customers who get to choose their area codes (although I suspect this a vanishingly small proportion of the electorate).