Is Bill Giving Hillary Bad Advice?It sounds to me as if Bill Clinton may be giving his wife some bum advice on "the strong thing."
A "strong woman," to me, means being a woman of realistic conviction as well as being a woman who is a trustworthy, capable, and job-worthy Commander in Chief. Of course, conviction is subjective. If a woman, from where we stand today, expresses the conviction that we need to stay in Iraq one nanosecond longer than we should while holding to the conviction that her vote on the Iraq War Resolution was valuable, it is the kind of conviction that would drive the majority of Americans away from her at the voting booth. Let's be blunt. One look at the public polls will show any intelligent person that the American public thinks the Iraq War was not worth the fuss, the death, or the treasure. When 70 percent of Republicans believe civil war will break out in Iraq, you know that cold reality is hitting the frying pan and splattering the burning grease of truth onto the lap of Washington D.C.
Hillary needs a new recipe.
72% Troops in Iraq: End War in 2006A new Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed.” The survey included 944 military respondents interviewed at several undisclosed locations throughout Iraq. It was conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies.
While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.
The troops have drawn different conclusions about fellow citizens back home. Asked why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, 37% of troops serving there said those Americans are unpatriotic.
Almost 90% think the Iraq war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, and most don’t blame the Iraqi public for insurgent attacks. The continuing insurgent attacks have not turned U.S. troops against the Iraqi population, the survey shows. More than 80% said they did not hold a negative view of Iraqis because of those attacks. However, less than a third think that if non-Iraqi terrorists could be prevented from crossing the border into Iraq, the insurgency would end.
My first impression is that, if 90% of those interviewed believe that Saddam Hussein actually had a role in 9/11 (a myth of which no reputable journalist has ever found proof), then it's no wonder that 37% of them would think it's "unpatriotic" for any of us here at home to demand a troop withdrawl. I hate to say this, but it seems that they are relying on false information, and I wonder who's feeding it to them over there. Is it Rush Limbaugh, the lying gasbag they hear in Iraq on American Forces Radio?
A BIT OF RECENT HISTORY REGARDING AMERICAN FORCES RADIO:
[See Media Matters' petition to have the Limbaugh propaganda removed]
[See Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's statement where he took issue with the fact that there was no commentary on the American Forces Radio service that would even begin to balance the extreme right-wing views that Rush Limbaugh routinely expresses on his program.]
[Last October, New York Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter called for an Inspector General investigation into the partisan bias of AFN programming.]
[See where American Forces Radio Network (AFRN), after plans to air Ed Schultz' progressive talk radio program were scrapped by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber, the "coach" of the now-infamous staged, scripted satellite feed featuring President Bush and troops in Iraq.]
[Blogger Brian Maloney has called the AFN Schultz shunning by the Department of Defense a "phony scenario" - but here we are four months later and is Schultz' voice is anywhere to be found in Iraq? The jury is still out on that one. American Forces Radio began airing “The Ed Schultz Show,” nearly two months after the controversial host was originally scheduled to hit the airwaves. Last December, the first hour of Schultz’s daily show, along with the first hour of the Al Franken radio show and the Sean Hannity show, was broadcast Monday through Friday over the network’s Voice Channel. HOWEVER (and here's the kick in the ass) - not everyone is able to hear the new shows.]
[Last January, the DOD news site wrote about a survey being conducted asking questions of 10,000 service members and Department of Defense civilian employees overseas to determine what they're looking for in radio programming provided by American Forces Network.]
Limbaugh has had the clear propaganda advantage in Iraq. He has made significant inroads into the minds of many of these soldiers, bombarding them with irresponsible misinformation for over the past three years. Let's face it - by the time this DOD survey about radio preference is completed, the troops will probably be home from Iraq - because regardless of what they think about their AFN radio service, 72% have stated, loud and clear, that they think it's time to draw down.
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Related: A post by John Zogby. [Huffington Post]
