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Mon. Aug 12, 2002

More Iraq-Yak: Polls and Maps

More Iraq-Yak: Polls and Maps – One must be careful with polls in general, especially when it comes to war. Just the same, the trend seems pretty clear in each result I’ve seen in the past couple of months. Dean Esmay points us first to John Ellis’ site for some recent results:

"The Fox News Channel/Opinion Dynamics Corporation Poll was conducted by telephone August 6-7, 2002 in the evenings. The sample was 900 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

Q. Do you support or oppose U.S. military action to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?

Support 69%

Oppose 22%

Not Sure 9%

The poll further notes American’s support if the war costs thousands of US lives or takes up to five years, but this is the one I found most interesting. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised we don’t trust Congress:

Q. Do you think Congress should have hearings to discuss the U.S. taking military action against Iraq, or would congressional hearings give away too much information?

1. Congress should have hearings 37%

2. Congressional hearings would give away too much info 53%

3. (Not sure) 10%

And if you look at this poll from late June, you see the support appears to be there on cause as well:

Would you favor using military action against a country that has not attacked the United States but is considered a threat if there was strong evidence that:

· The country was aiding terrorists who were making plans to attack the United States: 82%

· The country was planning to attack the United States in the future: 82%

· The country was an enemy and was developing chemical or biological weapons: 77%

· The country was an enemy and was developing nuclear weapons: 72%

In these polls and others, no matter how you slice it, the numbers of Americans opposed to war against Iraq seems to be in the 15 to 20% range. I think, in all ways, that would be healthy. I think 75 to 85% support of the public is required to successfully wage a war. However, the 15 to 20% remaining who are in dissent are healthy, because they keep us honest, if their arguments are strong. This has been a real weakness of the anti-war movement over the past year … they haven’t presented their case well, just stridently. Such is the irony of America; we don’t jail our dissenters, we ask why they can’t do better.

I know, we shouldn’t wage war with a finger in the wind, but at some level the calls for discussion in public and in Congress are all about arriving at a consensus, and that’s about numbers. We shouldn’t be afraid of seeking them out.

Plus, anyone who knows me knows I love to count the stats and look at the maps. And the University of Texas has Plenty-O-Maps (note, many of the following links are big files). When you compare this map of ”areas of dissent” with this map of population density and see how they correspond, one might conclude that, other than Baghdad and it’s surrounding area, the majority of the population of Iraq isn’t going to fight us.

It’s also intersting to note the location of Iraqi oil fields and facilities, as these will not only be targets for seizure, but again, they correspond nicely with the ”areas of dissent.” One can almost picture a drive coming out of Turkey straight down the pipeline to seize control of assets along the way. In fact, a viewing any of the large relief maps on that page shows there’s really only one point of entry on the Turkish border for forces of any size due to the topography.

Anyway, I think at some point you’ll find that page of maps useful, so you might want to bookmark it.