evidence that MOST Americans never trusted the Bush Cartel on the Iraq war. For instance, 58% of Americans opposed the Iraq war before the invasion (Feb. 03). 58%! Of that 58%, about half opposed the war outright, and the other half would only approve if it were a UN peacekeeping mission--i.e., world consensus--not a preemptive war by Bush.
This was across the board in all polls. Nearly 60%. That number dipped only once, for the few weeks of the invasion (with US troops at max risk) then went right back up to nearly 60%, where it stayed throughout the election. It's about 70% today.
I've been following the issue polls and you'd be amazed at what they show. For instance, 63% of Americans oppose torture "under any circumstances." Despite all the fearmongering and warmongering, MOST Americans are sticking to their sense of ethics and lawfulness and their progressive values.
I have a theory that the impression that we all get that Americans are uninformed "sheeple" and/or war yahoos is completely wrong. It is an ILLUSION created by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies who are giving the rightwing a BIG TRUMPET with which to promulgate their views, way out of proportion to their numbers.
Some of these are corporate news monopoly polls, so they are ignoring the evidence of their own polls--which go under-reported and are rarely talked about or analyzed, and which they use just to figure out what rightwing tripe they have to put on TV and radio, and fill their newspapers with, in order to COUNTER the views of the great progressive American MAJORITY.
So, unless you have proof that "the masses" haven't read PNAC, I will assume nothing about it. Maybe they have. But even if these so-called "masses" have not, their native good sense kicked in and told them Bush was full of crap.
Americans are NOT warmongers or uninformed "sheeple," in my opinion. What Americans are is disempowered and demoralized, and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED.
I think Americans have been signaling frantically for some time that they disapprove of Bush and his Middle East war (and literally EVERY Bush policy, foreign and domestic--so the issue polls show!), but no one listens to them, and they have almost no representation in DC, and no fair representation of their views in the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. In the 2004 election, for instance, the evidence shows that Kerry won by about a 4% to 5% margin (and if he'd been antiwar, he'd have won by an even bigger margin), but the vote got Diebolded. Two rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--counted all the votes using "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY software and firmware, with virtually no audit/recount capability, in the new electronic voting systems that were installed in 2002-2004, as a result of a $4 billion boondoggle from Congress (the wrongly named "Help America Vote Act"). (--should have been "Help American Corporations Steal the Vote Act.) The war profiteering corporate news monopolies then DOCTORED their exit polls (same day polls of people who had just voted), late on election day, on everybody's TV screens, to MATCH the "results" produced by Diebold's and ES&S's secret, proprietary programming, thus hiding strong evidence of a Kerry win. (Kerry won the real, un-doctored exit polls--it was later established.)
This transformation of the election system into a FRAUDULENT, non-transparent election system happened too fast--and way under the radar--for most Americans to catch up with it in time. I suspect that most Americans are relying on informal, word of mouth, SLOWER types of communication--and on the internet--for real information. They are "reading between the lines" of Bush propaganda in the news media, and not buying most of what is foisted upon them as news and opinion, but the electronic voting thing was SO under the radar, there wasn't time to get word of it, understand it and act to correct it. Now that they are finding out about it (and Bush getting "re-elected" made them suspicious), there are movements all over the country to reform the election system, but it's an open question whether or not this fascist coup that has seized power CAN be dislodged, given their control of the election system.* Stay tuned.
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Recently, in Ohio, four ELECTION REFORM initiatives were predicted to win by 60/40, but on election day LOST by 60/40--an audacious flipover of the vote. It appears that the machines and their masters are PREVENTING election reform--a chilling Orwellian twist.
See Bob Koehler's article on the Ohio initiatives:
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?custid=67&catid=1824