White House spokesman Tony Snow visited with Rush Limbaugh yesterday and provided a pretty clear answer to that question, when he said: "the war is more popular in Iraq than it is in the United States because the Iraqis actually get to see the Americans in action." The Iraqis really love the war we brought to their country and so love the occupation -- even more than Americans love it! -- just like polls show:
_Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.
_ About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces . . . About 61 percent approved of the attacks _ up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly among Shiite Iraqis.
And:
A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.
And:
Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year. By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intends keep permanent military bases in the country.
And:
The State Department, meanwhile, has also conducted its own poll, something it does periodically, spokesman Sean McCormack said. The State Department poll found that two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to The Washington Post.
It is a rather compelling sign of just how freely and casually Bush officials lie when Snow claims that the war is popular among Iraqis even though the Government's own poll shows that " two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces" and an independent poll shows that the same percentage of Iraqis generally -- from both sides of the sectarian war -- actually approve of violent attacks on U.S. troops, a percentage which has increased substantially this year.
Snow also explained that what we have achieved in Iraq is "miraculous," and that Americans are only against the war because the media lies about how bad things are there: "what they constantly get on television and newspapers is a failure narrative. They hear body counts, they don't hear about successes." The distance between the administration's statements and reality has always been huge, but their claims now are completely detached from reality.
