=========== More Short Articles Passionate anti-Semitism Ricin in the mail Poodle leaves sinking ship Army criticises Terror War strategy Iraq's WMD:  Case Closed Asymetric War in Iraq Information Operations Bad news for Bush Stripping Plame of cover Terrorists and Terrorism Experts Polycentric Iraqi Nationalism Bush flight suit mystery Thinking about the Iraqi resistance Public Baffled by Terror Alerts Normal Failures Bush in Free Fall INC and Blowback Google finds Weapons of Mass Destruction More Polls The Timothy McVeigh Finishing School Reinforcing an opinion Legitimacy Borderlands Orwellian Centenary Cognitive Dissonance Heaven and other things Polls, Polls, Polls Where are they now: Eugene Hasenfus More Mass Delusions WMD Trailers NOT NRA rules in Iraq:  Gun confiscation flops About that Anthrax... Another Fine Mess Chaos in Iraq

June 19, 2003

Warbaby says:

Two new Gallup polls show only 3% of the U.S. population has a grip on the facts of the Iraqi WMD and Bush's "war boost" is over.  The BBC polls the world and finds Homer Simpson is the #1 American (beating out George Washington by a long shot) and finally, Afghanistan is the world's #1 opium producer.

Interesting data from the wonderful world of statistics.

1. Belief versus reality on the WMD issue -- startling results from a Gallup Poll show the news media and political establishment have managed to create a complete fantasy world regarding America's reason for invading Iraq.
   
2. Satisfaction with the way things are going is still sliding, even having a war doesn't make people feel better for long.  This graph says it all
   
   
   
   Notice the flip in opinion caused by attacking Iraq.  Four months later, we're back where we were in March.  So if Bush only gets a four months boost by starting a war, who are we going to attack in July 2004?  On second thought, why take chances?  Better to start the war right before the election, say in September as part of the 9/11 ceremonies....
   
3. The BBC solicited reader's nominations for the top 10 Americans of all time - here's what they got:
   Homer Simpson: 40.83%
   Abraham Lincoln: 10.28%
   Martin Luther King Jnr: 10.06%
   Thomas Jefferson: 6.43%
   Mr T: 8.38%
   Bob Dylan: 6.15%
   George Washington: 5.10%
   Franklin D Roosevelt: 4.34%
   Benjamin Franklin: 4.52%
   Bill Clinton: 3.92%
   
   And nobody named Bush is even in the running.  Heh.
   
4. And finally, the glories of restoring a free market to a region formerly oppressed by a theocracy run by madmen:  Afghanistan is the world's #1 producer of opium for the second year in a row.  The Taliban had eliminated opium production in the areas they controlled, but George Bush has finally put things back on track.  Peter Dale Scott has some very bitter things to say about drugs and U.S. agression.