Spin from the homefront...

CNN "reports" on a new poll showing that America is starting to wake up and smell the burning oil; maybe war and occupation in Iraq wasn't such a good idea after all...:

"Only 56 percent of Americans think current U.S.-coalition efforts as [Teddy: typo theirs, not mine] going well, according to a new CNN/USA Today Gallup poll. That is much lower than the 70 percent in late May and the 86 percent in early May who thought things were going well...

Less than half of Americans said they were confident that U.S. forces would capture or kill Saddam, down from 70 percent in March."

But CNN spins the numbers as only they can, offering such misleading statements as:

"About 45 percent said they lacked confidence that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction would be found, up from 15 percent in March.

The poll also found little difference in the number of those who believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about Iraqi weapons -- 37 percent now, up from 31 percent earlier in June."

Apparently a six percent swing is "little difference" to CNN. What really gets me is their ambiguous usage of the word "also" in this last sentence, which indirectly applies that same description ("little difference") to the fifteen percent jump in lack of confidence at finding WMD in the previous sentence. Pretty hackish, even for CNN...

But the best is saved for last - Rumsfeld is virtually allowed to write the column for CNN (they quote him for whole paragraphs - his word count is a whopping 27 percent of the article's total count) , and finally he shows his prowess for international diplomacy when asked about NATO sending troops to Iraq as a whole entity:

"'That would be a matter for the 19 NATO nations to sort through,' he said."

Translation: in our singleminded push toward war, we alienated pretty much all of our former allies (i.e. NATO), and even now that its become glaringly apparent that we could, oh yeah, use some international troops in Iraq to defuse growing Anti-Americanism, we're too proud to resort to the tool of the weak and the French - namely diplomacy.

For more counterspin, check Billmon.

-tn

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