A 68 Percent to 14 Percent Majority Believes That There is Now a Civil War in Iraq

[sabra]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061129/nyw144.html?.v=79

A 68 Percent to 14 Percent Majority Believes That There is Now a Civil War in Iraq
Public is divided on whether it was a mistake to take military action or whether things have just gotten off course


ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite NBC News' recent announcement that from now on they will describe what was previously called "sectarian violence" as a "civil war," the White House maintains that "what is happening in Iraq does not fit the definition of a civil war."(1) According to a new Harris Poll, a lop-sided 68 percent to 14 percent majority of U.S. adults now believes that there is a civil war in Iraq. In other words, a majority of Americans agrees with NBC.

The public is split between those who believe that "it was a mistake to take military action in Iraq in the first place" (42%) and those who think it "was the right thing to do but that things have gotten off course" (40%). Only a small minority (13%) believes that it "was the right thing to do and things are going reasonably well."

These are some of the results of a Harris Poll of 2,429 U.S. adults surveyed online between November 13 and 20, 2006.

[LynnTheDem]

1. That 40% of Americans could possibly think INVADING

a nation that had been doing NOTHING WHATSOFUCKINGEVER to anyone was "the right thing to do"...

Well but then Germans in the 1930s and '40s thought Hitler was doing "the right thing" too.

[ninkasi]

2. The 40% who think that

the invasion was the right thing to do, but that things have gotten off course, are trying to keep themselves from feeling guilty. The invasion was wrong, period. We do not have the right to invade another country simply because we want to change the regime, and well, by the way, there IS all that oil there...I think they are only trying to deny to themselves how very strongly off-course our country is under Bush and the republicans. They might loathe Bush, but can't admit that their country can be wrong, and that our error has caused such bloodshed.

[brer cat]

6. Many people were swept up after 9/11 in the real NEED

for revenge, to believe that the great USA military could crush anyone remotely involved, and thereby restore our national security. I don't think any of them thought for a minute beyond that immediate need to what would lie ahead...especially in Iraq.

I agree that they are trying now to keep from feeling guilty. I don't blame them. I can't sleep nights, and I was opposed to the war before day one. How do they sleep at nights when they went along with it?

[ninkasi]

7. I was vehemently opposed to invading Iraq

and I am very often kept awake by the crushing sense of guilt I feel that our country has caused that country so much pain. Nothing we have done in Iraq has done one iota to punish the ones who were responsible for planning the 9-11 attacks. The ones who actually carried out the attacks are dead. Whatever danger Iraq might have represented had been effectively contained by the weapons inspections, and they were no danger to us. They did not harbor Al-Qaeda, although thanks to the neocons, that has changed.

We have lost almost 3,000 men and women to the violence of that bloody war, and many, many times that many have been maimed physically, mentally, or both. Families have broken up, our troops have come home to find their jobs gone, and the people who love them often find that the loved one they tearfully said good-bye to are not the same people who came back.

I can understand the need to assign, and punish guilt, but at the same time, as a rational, thinking person, I know that that might not be the wisest course to take. Bush and Cheney only used the collective fear, and uncertainty of the American people in order to gain support for their destruction and rape of Iraq. Even if we killed every man, woman, and child in Iraq, it would neither bring back the ones lost in the attacks on the twin towers, nor any loss suffered in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

We frequently condemn what we see as the barbaric practice of gang raping a Muslim woman in order to atone for a sin committed by a male member of her family. I realize that this is not necessarily a practice which is condoned by Islam, but can be, instead, more of a tribal practice.
We can quite easily see the injustice of such an act, because an innocent woman is being for something that was beyond her control. Saddam Hussein, as vile as he is, was unable to control Al-Qaeda from attacking us on 9-11. Why, then, can anybody justify what we have inflicted on that country by citing the loss of life on that day?

Most of us here at DU do not, and we can see how wrong it is. Many people who got caught up in the heat of revenge, and who applauded our invasion of Iraq, have now had a chance to see that the war so desired by Bush and the neocons is wrong. For the ones who can't bring themselves to admit that they were wrong, it's easier to blame the way the war has been conducted, rather than face up to the fact that the war itself was wrong, and doomed to failure before we used "shock and awe" upon the innocent citizens of a sovereign country.

[ECH1969]

3. We need Kofi Annan and Carter to change their goddamn tune

I can't believe they said it wasn't a civil war?

Do they really want to be on Bush's side?

[Imagevision]

4. So what?!! - either way it doesn't make Bush less of a traitor that he is!

[demosincebirth]

5. While we debate whether its a civil war or not, the killing goes on.

I say who gives a shit...people are dying.

[MGD]

8. It is a civil war but it isn't necessarily the worst civil war to ever be waged...yet.

Compared to our own, it's pretty mild IMO.