Last Straw

A recent poll of 954 U.S. troops by Le Moyne Col­lege/Zogby Inter­na­tional in Iraq shows that, while 58% say their mis­sion is clear and 42% say the U.S. role is hazy, 85% say the mis­sion is mainly “to retali­ate for Saddam’s role in the 9 – 11 attacks,” and 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Sad­dam from pro­tect­ing al Qaeda in Iraq.”

This is sim­ilar to gen­eral U.S. pub­lic opin­ion, which polls in 2003 and 2004 indic­ated that 70% of Amer­ic­ans believed Sad­dam was involved with 9 – 11.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t even bother to ques­tion author­ity, let alone find out the eas­ily veri­fi­able truth.

It’s a trivial mat­ter to dis­miss the idea that Sad­dam was “pro­tect­ing al Qaeda in Iraq,” and although they’ve men­tioned Sad­dam, 9 – 11 and “al Qaeda” in the same breath over and over again, subtlely rein­for­cing the myth, even the Bush regime had to admit there was no link between Sad­dam and 9 – 11.

Truth is the first cas­u­alty of war.

Often uttered, rarely learned.

On the other hand 72% of those sur­veyed are per­cept­ive enough to real­ise they should leave within the next year. At least that’s in line with Iraqi pub­lic opin­ion.