Even by JB Williams’ admittedly low standards, this column is really bad:

Polls Demonstrate Effectiveness of Message, Not Mission

JB Williams

August 31, 2005 – The easiest thing to find in America today, or the world for that matter, is an opinion about the war effort in Iraq.

Well no shit. All you have to do is go outside and ask someone what they think about the Iraq war. It isn’t that difficult. Hell, you could say the same thing about opinions on the goddamn Easter Bunny. I went up to some dude just the other day and said, “Hey! Is that Easter Bunny wack or what? Who does he think he is, hopping around town, leaving big piles of rainbow-colored rabbit shit on my front porch?” And the guy looked at me and said, “Right on, man! That fuckin’ bunny can rot in hell for all I care!”

As the old saying goes, ?opinions are like rear-ends, everybody has one?, and most of them stink. Both anti-war and pro-war folks often use their favorite polling data to prop up their respective position, as if the polls have all the answers.

What neither side wants to admit is that these polls are for all practical purposes, useless. First, all polling results assume that those being polled are educated on the topic, qualified to have an opinion, something we know not to be true right from the start.

In other words, the only people who are qualified to give their opinion on the Iraq war are Pentagon officials, military historians, and columnists at The Rant.

Most people?s education on the war in Iraq is limited to at best, what they saw on the 6 o?clock news last night, or read this morning in the headlines. Few have any direct knowledge of what is actually happening on the ground in Iraq, be it good, bad or indifferent.

And because so few of us have any in depth knowledge of military affairs, we shouldn’t ever question any war our government starts. So if Bush decides to invade New Zealand because he wants a pet koala bear, then by gum, we have to support him because we’re just not qualified to question his judgment. (And besides, you don’t really want the Aussies and the Kiwis to corner the world market on snuggly marsupials, do you?)

So they lean on opinion polls to either prove that they are just as bright as the balance of an equally uniformed public, or justify their preconceived notions, regardless of how anyone else feels on the topic. Either way, the polls are useless in determining true public sentiment.

Huh? I thought you were saying that polls accurately captured public sentiment, but that we shouldn’t pay attention to the public because they’re stupid.

But what I see in these polls is two very important pieces of information. First, that only 5% or less of the population is honest enough to give the correct answer, ?I don?t know?.

I’d always thought the point of opinion polls was to, you know, gage public opinion, not to look for correct or incorrect answers. I mean, imagine if I conducted a poll about dinosaurs using JB’s methodology:

ME: “What is your favorite dinosaur?”
IDIOT WHO THINKS HE’S QUALIFIED TO NAME HIS FAVORITE DINOSAUR: “Triceratops.”
ME: “I’m sorry, the correct answer is stegosaurus. Asshole.”

Second, that the answer to any survey greatly depends upon (a) who is being surveyed, and (b) how the questions are being phrased.

Wow! So people with different opinions may in fact respond to opinion polls differently! I’d never have guessed! Not only that, but people will actually provide different answers depending on the question! This brilliant insight has completely turned my world upside down. See, I’d always thought that most people would give the same answer every time, no matter what the question. I mean, whenever someone asks me something, I always respond by saying, “COOOOOOW-OOOOOOKIE CRISP!” And while it might not be an satisfactory answer, it does get people to leave me the fuck alone.

From left: Gavin, Seb and me, fighting over our favorite cereal.

The AP asked the question this way, “Should the United States keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized, or should the United States bring its troops home from Iraq immediately?”

The Harris Poll asked the same question this way, “Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there OR bringing most of our troops home in the next year?”

Say, JB? That’s not the same question. In fact, when you word questions differently, they often become entirely different questions. Funny how that works.

I could waste paper on the others, but you get the point. These are actually two very different questions.

Amazing. I don’t know why you’re not a goddamn detective with powers of discernment like that.

Both ask an open ended front end question of leaving troops in Iraq indefinitely. But the back end of each question is very different. The first asks if we should ?bring troops home from Iraq immediately?” and the other asks if we should ?bring most of our troops home in the next year?” the second being an arbitrary ?what if? obviously.

Which one is more valid? Which one provides a better glimpse into the hearts and minds of the American people? Don?t hurt yourself trying to come up with the right answer to this trick question. The only honest answer is neither.

Or how about, “Both polls accurately reflect the public’s opinion of different scenarios?”

Most news organizations contract numerous polling companies to conduct their surveys. The news organizations usually phrase the questions and then publish the set of results that supports their headline. It?s legit, it is a real poll from a real respected outside expert polling group who really did contact more than a 1000 people randomly. But, they carefully phrased the questions and then cherry picked the results.

“Cherry picking the results” implies that they threw out answers that didn’t conform to their point of view. I’m pretty sure they didn’t do that, JB.

Meanwhile, Joe six-pack kicks back in his easy chair after a hard day on the assembly line and miraculously discovers that he is just as much an expert on modern warfare and national security as those generals running the war or those politicians running the generals, once he finds a poll he likes of course.

The whole game is a sham? Still the American people tolerate the sham, even subscribe to it when it suits their own personal agenda.

So… are the American people the villains in this story? Or are the polling companies? Or maybe we should just simplify it by saying, “Everyone not named ‘Blessed Savior George W. Bush’ is evil.”

The most amazing part to me is the fact that so many armchair generals and closet diplomats with no credentials what-so-ever, actually believe they know best how to secure this nation, defeat world-wide international terrorism that has existed since the beginning of time, and develop a free self-governed nation in a part of the world that has never know such an opportunity since Adam and Eve hung out naked in the garden.

Yeah, I guess the public really is that stupid. It’s a wonder we even allow them to vote.

Most Americans would fail an American history class today. They would have no chance passing an exam on world history, so they don?t know how this all got started and they have no idea how to finish a job they didn?t even know needed to be done. But they have an opinion?

They kind of remember September 11, 2001, but they see no connection between international terrorism as a philosophy or religion and the events of that day. They know full well that Saddam Hussein was the best known terrorist on earth, but as long as he was ?contained? to only terrorizing his own people, many ?humanitarians? were happy to look the other way.

The thesis of JB Williams’ column seems to be that most people are dumb. And by saying that Saddam Hussein is “the best known terrorist on earth,” he proves his point.

The world has known and dealt with Hussein?s evil ambitions for decades and every administration since Reagan knew the time would come when he would have to be forcibly removed from power.

Which was, of course, why Big Ron sent him a bunch of weapons.

The Clinton administration made regime change the official policy towards Iraq, as did the UN on several occasions. But when the Bush administration decided to enforce the policy (made official years earlier), many Americans conveniently forgot all about the past, as did France.

The point is this. At best, polling results deliver a glimpse into how well any particular message is getting to those being polled. It is in no way a vehicle through which one can gauge the success of any military mission. The questions are phrased by people seeking a specific outcome, the data is cherry picked to support the current headline and few of those being polled have any idea what is actually going on in Iraq or anywhere else in the world.

Believe what you want. Support, dissent or undermine the mission of our troops. But don?t blame it on bogus polling results that are nothing more than tools of deception. If your heart isn?t in this war, so be it.

But when you start crossing the line of honest dissent into dishonest and dangerous propaganda peddling, remember whose lives hang in the balance.

And that’s the end of the column. I’m still not sure what the point of it was, but if I had to guess, I’d sum it up thusly:

1.) Opinion polls are unreliable ways to gage public opinion because the public is stupid.

2.) Polling companies ask the public questions in the hopes of undermining the war effort.

3.) People who report on polls are responsible for the deaths of our troops.

That’s pretty stunning wingnuttery, JB. It’s right up there with Erik Rush’s plan to annex Haiti and Mexico.