No, no, no. This is how it goes.
The press tells the public what the public *wants* to believe. Then the
press releases a poll confirming that the public believes what it wants (or
wanted) to believe. (Whether the public believed what it wanted to believe
before it was told what it wanted to believe... is left as an exercise for
the reader.)
- Joe
Joseph S. Barrera III <joebar@microsoft.com>
<http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar/>
Phone, Office: (415) 778-8227; Cellular: (415) 601-3719; Home: (415)
588-4801
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views and do not
reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.
-----Original Message-----
From: CobraBoy! [SMTP:tbyars@earthlink.net]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 1997 3:03 PM
To: fork@xent.ics.uci.edu
Subject: Re: *** Most Americans favor bombing Iraq - poll
At 2:50 PM -0800 11/13/97, Robert S. Thau wrote:
> tbyars@earthlink.net writes:
> >
> > Most Americans say the U.S. should bomb Iraq if it continues to
block
> > U.S. citizens from taking part in U.N. arms inspections, and 8
in 10
> > or 84% favor retaliation if Baghdad tries to shoot down U.S.
spy
> > planes, an ABC poll said Wednesday.
>
> Great. Once again, the press tells the public what to believe,
and
> then releases a poll confirming that they believe it.
[snip]
> So, on the one hand, it's pretty clearly important to get
monitoring
> back into place, using whatever means are necessary and useful.
Even
> I, bleeding heart that I am, wouldn't rule out a military strike
if
> that's what it takes --- but bear in mind that the effect of that
on
> our relations with other Arab governments would be nasty at best.
Cruise missiles, the ultimate bitch slap.
> On the other hand, the sanctions just don't look useful. Perhaps
it's
> time to try something else --- but that would involve the
> U.S. government admitting it made a mistake in dealing with a
hostile
> power. Not likely.
I don't think the other Arab's give a rats ass. This is mostly about
him
being able to sell oil again. If he re-enters the market he is going
to
drive prices down by selling his oil at cut rate prices to get
people to
buy. The other oil producing nations aren't in too much of a hurry
to see
that. As long as we keep this to ourselves and keep Israel out of it
they
don't care if we pop in a few cruise missiles. I predict a Saturday
night
strike. (Well Sun morning)
Tim
-
Anyway, that's just my opinion, meant to confuse and disorient...
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>