Ari and Karl Do The Tango

The new NY Times Poll has a roaring headline saying:

Growing Number in U.S. Back War, Survey Finds

Americans are growing impatient with the United Nations and say they would support military action against Iraq even if the Security Council refuses to support an invasion, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

The poll found that 58 percent of Americans said the United Nations was doing a poor job in managing the Iraqi crisis, a jump of 10 points from a month ago. And 55 percent of respondents in the latest poll would support an American invasion of Iraq, even if it was in defiance of a vote of the Security Council.

The problem with this headline is that they didn’t mention that while the public feels the United Nations isn’t “managing” the crisis well, the Bush administration has a bare 51% of Americans who think that he is. And that number hasn’t budged. The same number feel he is doing a good job on foreign policy in general, 51%.

The second question concerning defiance of a Security Council vote has never been asked before, so saying that such sentiment is growing is based upon total conjecture.

On the other hand the answers to many of the questions are so contradictory and incoherent that you really have to wonder what the hell people are thinking.

My personal favorite is:

From what you have seen or heard so far, how much progress have the U.N. weapons inspectors made in finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a lot, some, not much, or none at all?

9% say “a lot”, 47% say “some”, 33% say “not much”, 8% say “none at all”, and 3% say “don’t know.”

56% of the public believe that the inspectors have made some or a lot of progress finding weapons of mass destruction. I suppose they could mean since 1991, but surely a fair number think that Blix and his boys have found them in this last round.

oh…