(no subject)

[somedaybitch]

Jules Crittenden and polls on Iraq.

“63 percent of Americans say they want the plan to succeed, including 79 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of independents and 51 percent of Democrats.”

The percentage of people who think it might succeed, 49. The percent who think it probably won’t, 52.

People have been hit with a relentless drumbeat of bad news about Iraq and the widespread insistence that Iraq is an intractable problem, that the Arabs have always been killing each other and always will. Both assumptions are as true as the notions that Northern Ireland is an intractable problem, and that Catholics and Protestant have always killed each other and always will.

But if the majority of Americans wants us out of an intractable mess, the majority also would rather see us sort it out, if it is at all possible, and a lot of them think it is. That suggests Americans are waiting for signs of success, but presented only with reasons to despair, have agreed to do so..."

and there's this bit, which surprised me, considering the speaker.

"...James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group produced a series of truly bad ideas in December — a hasty withdrawal schedule and talks from a position of weakness with the very nations trying to force us out of Iraq — Tuesday said something very wise.

He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee it made no sense to approve Gen. Petraeus’s appointment to command in Iraq while undercutting him with resolutions in defiance of his mission. And Baker, whose plan for Iraq has been largely pushed aside by the president, showed himself to be a big man with a sense of history and propriety when he told the senators they should give the president’s plan a chance to succeed...."