Poll: Most Iraq Shia Arabs Oppose Attacks

[skooooo]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-shia-arabs-poll,0,3408366.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

By The Associated Press

April 5, 2004, 7:15 PM EDT

Shia Arabs in Iraq generally do not support attacks against coalition forces like the ones that occurred over the weekend, according to a nationwide poll of Iraqis.

On Sunday, Shia Arabs in several parts of the country fought with coalition forces, killing at least 52 Iraqis and nine coalition troops. The confrontation threatened to open a dangerous new front: a confrontation with Iraq's powerful Shia majority, which has until now largely avoided violence with the Americans.

Shias are less likely than Sunnis to say the invasion of Iraq was wrong -- by about 30 percentage points. And only one in 10 Shias say attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, compared with three in 10 Sunni Arabs and seven in 10 Sunnis in the Anbar province.

The poll of 2,737 Iraqis age 15 and older was conducted from Feb. 9-28 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, larger for subgroups like Shia Arabs. The poll was conducted by Oxford Research International for ABC News, the BBC, the German network ARD and the Japanese network NHK.

[Barrett808]

1. February? Seems like stale data

Wonder what they're thinking now.

[LittleApple81]

4. Who would volunteer to go door to door asking questions now? n/t

[keithyboy]

24. More importantly, would you say that you support the attacks?

How stupid can this be? Why would anyone say anything except what you thougt your occupiers wanted you to say?

[fishnfla]

2. Iraqi polls are worthless

Western-style polling techniques are not reliable in Iraq for alot of reasons. I wouldnt put much faith in them

[skooooo]

3. Yeah, just thought it was interesting.

I guess time will tell how popular Sadr and his ideas are with the majority...

[fishnfla]

13. Time is short my friend

The only poll that matters now is the one conducted by Kalishnikov.

[IndianaGreen]

5. The only people that believe in Iraqi "polls"

are the gullible Americans.

[MisterP]

6. the ones conducted by armed occupation troops?

[Aidoneus]

10. any poll taken under occupation..

is suspect at best.

[wtmusic]

7. 1 in 10? That's only one million people to eradicate

And I thought we had a problem here. :eyes:

[PsN2Wind]

8. What is most amazing to me is

them saying in February they don't support what happened yesterday.

[markses]

12. It's the magic of straight out fucking lying

They take Americans for fools, and for the most part, they're correct.

[theHandpuppet]

19. Good catch!

Well, you know how it is... a little administration-friendly extrapolation of dated info. Hey, it worked to hoodwink folks about those pesky WMDs!

[bluestateguy]

9. I am in receipt of the poll from the corporate media

Somehow I get the feeling that angry people out in the streets are going to tell Western pollsters to go to hell and hang up the phone, if they even own one.

[skooooo]

11. Well....assuming the poll is correct....

That still leaves a lot of people who advocate violence against the CPA, no matter how you slice it. 10% of the Shia population is a sizable amount.

[TcAaNnSaTdAiAaFnL]

14. 15 and older wont give you an accurate picture

When kids 12 years old can run around with AK 47's using deadly force to drive their point home 15 isn't really the right age to start polling...

[itaintmema]

15. But that poll would support the illegal war would it not?

If this is poll is true then it would support what the US is doing in Iraq. I think we need to discredit this BS as soon as possibe before middle America gets wind of it and starts to relate it to bush and our troops in action. How can we discredit this ASAP?

[skooooo]

16. I guess it depends on how you read it....

I mean how many Iraqis would actually admit that they advocate violence against the US forces? The fact that any at all did only indicates that the number is HIGHER in my opinion.

[TcAaNnSaTdAiAaFnL]

17. not necessarily

"But that poll would support the illegal war would it not?"

I don't think so, just because the Iraqi people don't support the attacks on the US doesn't mean they support the US.. They probably just realize that any attack on the US would be met with 10X the force in return and only lead to more Iraqi casualties

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[Old and In the Way]

28. I think he gave you an honest "take" on it.

I'm not sure anyone can objectively devine what the majority of Iraqi's truly think about anything these days...do you?

I do know this, though. The Republican Party has 3000 political operatives in Iraq that are trying to stage manage this disaster for Dimson. I think this can be nothing but good news for us.

[bobbyboucher]

32. Agreed. Only the DU/Bush nanobots

would fall for that tripe.

Good call.

[Guaranteed]

40. Nope.

Not at all.

LOL

[Sagan]

21. "Excuse me, sir... I'm from the Coalition Provisional Authority..."

"Would you mind telling us if you support or condemn the attacks on American troops?"


Fucking duh...

[0007]

26. Sir, pretends to be pretty stupid, not hard to figure out his game

Kind of like GP

[nolabels]

33. Hypothecally supposed they really did the poll and asked the ............

questions. (This is just so much B.S.) Do you really think they are going to be answering, "yea, we support murder and mayhem"

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.' - Tom Clancy "

http://www.miniluv.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=471

[aneerkoinos]

39. Cole comments:

"Nearly 3 Million Iraqis, Sunni and Shiite, Approve of attacks on Americans

An opinion poll taken in late February showed that 10 % of Iraq's Shiites say attacks on US troops are "acceptable." But 30% of Sunni Arabs say such attacks are acceptable, and fully 70% of Anbar province approves of attacking Americans. (Anbar is where Ramadi, Fallujah, Hadithah and Habbaniyah are, with a population of 1.25 million or 5% of Iraq--those who approve of attacks are 875,000).

But simple statistics don't tell the story. If there are 25 million Iraqis and Shiites comprise 65%, that is about 16 million persons. Ten percent of them is 1.6 million, which is a lot of people who hate Americans enough to approve of attacks on them. If Sunni Arabs comprise about 16% of the population, there are 4 million of them. If 30% approve of attacks, that is 1.2 million. That is, the poll actually shows that in absolute numbers, there are more Shiites who approve of attacks on Americans than there are Sunni Arabs. The numbers bring into question the official line that there are no problems in the South, only in the Sunni Arab heartland.

The other problem is that attitudes change, and sometimes they change rapidly. The US cannot count on the percentage of Shiites who approve of attacks on its troops remaining at 10% if it is strafing Sadr City in Baghdad. Every 1% increase in the number of Shiites who approve of attacks equals 160,000 new enemies."

http://www.juancole.com/