Shiny Happy Iraqis...Or Not

Shorter Debra Saunders: "I wrote an entire column based on cherrypicked numbers from an outdated poll, and the newer poll results are so bleak that even I have to admit they aren't totally rosy, but I'm still going to pretend I was right in the first place."

The longer version is a study in the mental contortions necessary to sustain the faith of the dead-enders...

For example, a reasonable person might say that if the number of people who think Iraq 'is moving in the wrong direction' is itself moving in the wrong direction, it suggests that, in an objective sense, Iraq is moving in the wrong direction. Saunders, however, looks on the bright side: the current number "beats the 44 percent of Californians who told the Public Policy Institute of California that the state is heading in the right direction." (That just tells me Iraq would be even worse off if they had Schwarzenegger as governor.)

Or take this bit:

The majority of Iraqis still answer, despite all the hardships they have experienced since the U.S.-British invasion, that they personally believe ousting Saddam Hussein was "worth it." The latest number is 61 percent -- 81 percent of Kurds, 75 percent of Shia Arabs and 11 percent of Sunnis -- although the overall number is down from 77 percent in January. [emphasis added]

You or I might see the vast discrepancy between Sunni and Shiite (or Kurdish) opinion as an ominous sign of intractable differences; we might well wonder if the Shiites are happy because Iraq is moving toward a Shiite-dominated theocracy, or if the Kurds are happy because Iraq is moving toward dissolution. Not Saunders, who clings resolutely to the 61% figure as a kind of vindication. There is no bad news; there is only good news that hasn't yet been spun as such.

Even unspun, it seems to me that the poll results in question are probably overly optimistic--not through any fault of the pollsters, but because of basic Iraqi reality. I think it's a pretty safe bet that the most dangerous and discontented areas are probably undersampled. (Drastically undersampled, if the polling agency has any concern for the safety of its employees.) What's more, if I read the methodology correctly, they made no attempt to survey the 1.5 million Iraqis who have fled the country. (I think it would be fair to put them all in the 'moving in the wrong direction' camp.)

Questions of accuracy notwithstanding, though, I give the pollsters credit for trying to learn something of what Iraqis think. That's credit I don't give to people like Saunders, who care only about proving themselves 'right', and see only what they need to see to keep believing until the bitter end.

[That's all, folks]