Abashed, I am sorry. I saw several follow up post that look wrong and wanted to clear it up.
Jim
According to CNN’s exit polls in the 2004 election, 52% of Americans thought that things were not going well in Iraq. Only 44% thought that things were going well.
That’s a majority of Americans, by an 8% margin, having a negative popular opinion of the war.
At best, one can claim by the same poll that 51% of Americans approved the initial decision to go to war with Iraq, as compared to the 45% who disapproved, but in no way does that mean the war was “relatively well supported”. Unless by “relatively” you mean “relative to popular support for Bush’s handling of Katrina” or “relative to popular support for the eating of kittens.”
I also think that the Democrats won’t be able to capitalize upon the unpopularity of the Iraq War until they figure out what their actual response is, just as they suffered during Vietnam until they straightened their response out on that. When half of the party says, “We need to leave right now, fuck 'em all” and the other half says, “We hate being there, but we need to stay until the job is done”, it doesn’t convince the average voter.
Perhaps. But I think there is a difference between saying that you think the war is going well and supporting it. The key question is how has support for the war going? The statistics you mention are interesting but incomplete:
How many supported the war and thought it was going well?
How many supported the war but did not think it was going well?
How many opposed the war but thought it was going well?
How many opposed the war and did not think it was going well?
I daresay that in the past year, the percentage of people who support the war AND the percentage of people who think it is going well have decreased dramatically.
Hmm. Point on the polls well taken and concede your point; I support the war, but am not quite sure it’s going well.
As for your prediction, I will note your previous prediction that by this point all the media in America would be talking about how Bush was off the wagon; compound it with your current prediction that Cheney is going to be indicted; and take your prediction of future war support with that in mind. 
Just because things haven’t happened yet doesn’t mean that they won’t.
If Bush wasn’t already off the wagon, he soon will be. This must be a very trying time for him and if he wasn’t the personification of evil, I’d feel sorry for him. This story will break soon- the mainstream press needs someone in the inner circle to crack.
Cheney being indicted: Might still happen. More likely to me is a plea bargain- no indictment in exchange for resignation.
Support for the war fading: Now I will bet upwards of 50 cents on this one. In order to reverse the trend something positive has to happen in Iraq. That is as likely as Harriet Meiers and Janet Reno getting a spread in Playboy.
jfranchi, re: Dean:
Hmm… a tactic I hadn’t seriously considered, but maybe you’re onto something there…
ROFL, I missed a little punctuation there, didn’t I.
Considering some potential candidates, I will stand by the statement I made by mistake.
Dean running in 2008 is going to depend entirely on the results of the mid-term elections. Democrats can smell blood in the water and are going to expect to see gains. If gains are made, Dean is going to have all kinds of chits to pull in. If not, his head will be on a pike.
My apologies. This is how I remembered it. Probably because in my mind such a scream would be insignificant in its original context, I couldn’t imagine it any other way. That’s the way the brain works, and it’s important to realise that.
Thanks for setting me straight.
Thank you for a mental image that I now have to wash out of my brain with bleach.
Damn, John, you crack me up. “Not quite sure,” indeed. And how are things out there in the Gamma Quadrant?
What? We invaded a foreign country and have occupied it for two years now. Despite a constant insurgency, only 2000 Americans have died.
If you know of a way in which the war could have gone better- aside from the whole “well, we could never have invaded in the first place”- please let me know.
The war went well, the casualties are actually low.
The ill-will we appear to be generating could be very counter productive.
The fact the war was sold on what fully appears to be creative reports about WMD’s is repugnant.
The fact the non-military people (Cheney & Rumsfeld) overrode the experienced Colin Powell’s advise is sad, very sad. He was trying to build a UN consensus to provide a joint UN effort.
The various very horrible and embarrassing violations of the Geneva Convention are ruining our reputation world wide.
Besides Bush said the war was won, this is just the follow-up to the war.
Jim
Well, not disbanding the Iraqi army en masse would have been one change; de-Ba’athing the officers would have been sufficient and would have save time on training. Not going in expecting flowers and marching bands would have been a realistic expectation; it took some time to recover and regroup from that foolish prediction. Sending troops to the sites of the suspected WMDs might have proved useful (had there been any WMDs); we gave plenty of time for WMDs to be moved or looted (had there been any WMDs).
Obviously, I was and am against the war, but if my government is going to invade another country, I at least expect them to do so competently. The war was mismanaged and bungled from day one from the political side.
Had I been Master of the Universe those several years ago, I’d have prosecuted and convicted Kerry for treason and had him hanged on the Capitol steps.
Since that wasn’t possible, at least I finally got a chance to vote against him.
Also, not everybody thinks Bush is as evil as you think he is. He sucks as a Prez, but so have some others I’ve watched try to do the job.
Personally I don’t think Bush is evil. Ashcroft, Cheney and Rumsfeld on the otherhand.
“Could have gone better”? Well, it would have been better if so many Iraqis hadn’t been thrown out of work by the privatization “shock treatment” that left a vacuum in services and reconstruction; if we hadn’t tortured prisoners; if we had actually spent our allocated funds rebuilding infrastructure and hadn’t somehow lost nearly $10 billion of it; if we had been able actually to contain and defeat the insurgency; if we hadn’t had 16,000 troops wounded in insurgent attacks; in short, if we had actually been able to end the war when we declared “Mission Accomplished” and had managed actually to rebuild and restabilize the country in the subsequent two and a half years.
I think that would have been substantially better than the situation we’ve got now, yes.
If your response is that that scenario is unrealistic, and there was no possible way to avoid the long-drawn-out hostility and struggle that we’re now facing…well, that’s exactly why so many of us thought the invasion was a bad idea in the first place, back when our leaders were refusing to contemplate how difficult, prolonged, and expensive it might be.
A lot of people are saying they wish John Kerry had been replaced by a better candidate in 2004. And once again I’m saying that any Democrat who ran in 2004 would now be lying in the trash heap. Running an unsuccesful Presidential campaing is a guaranteed way to ruin your reputation. If Howard Dean or Wesley Clark or John Edwards had been on top of the ticket in 2004, many people would be asking “Why’d they pick that loser? Why didn’t they go with a great candidate like John Kerry? He’d have kicked Bush’s ass.”
Shodan’s already gotten the email. “Elections in 2008…like that’s going to happen…silly liberals.”
What world do you live in? Kerry was a terrible candidate. He could relate to moderates. He couldn’t relate to everyman. He was a strange candidate. Many, many people complained when he won the nomination. Kerry only had appeal to liberals and die hard Democrats that vote the ticket no matter who is on the ballot. Oh, I guess some New England Elite liked him also.
Many, many of his votes were simply anti-Bush votes.
Many, who voted for Bush, did so because they hated Kerry and his “Liberal Politics”.