Vote of Confidence

According to the mainstream media, Secretary Rumsfeld's incompetent and the sky's falling in Iraq. Not so, say George Bush and Tony Blair. Now two other interested groups have weighed in:

• Our troops: Remembering election defeats of yore, many Democrats try tightrope walking whereby they "support the troops" but oppose the war. This straddle fools only the fools, but also prompts absurd assertions (invariably undocumented) that leftists are merely supporting our military personnel, which supposedly opposes the Iraq war. Wrong again:
  

  Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting. . .
  
  In addition, 87% say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they'd leave the service.

  Anyone genuinely interested in unearthing the views of servicemen and women--the last person I'd ask is a liberal.



• Ordinary Iraqis: I've long argued the vast majority of Iraqis support America's invasion and transitory presence in Iraq. I was right, according to the United Nations, which UNHCR does not encourage Iraqis abroad to repatriate now," supposedly because of terrorism fears, but Iraqis aren’t obeying the UN bureaucracy--they've voted with their feet:

  The UN's refugee body said 42,000 out of 50,000 Iraqis at the centres had left since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
  
  Six out of the UN's 22 camps in south Iran are empty and another two are due to close by the end of the month. . .
  
  About 107,000 refugees have left Iran since the former Iraqi leader was removed last year. . . .
  
  Most of the Iraqis have returned by their own means [despite] several reports of people dying crossing the minefields on the border, according to the agency.

  Anything left in the quiver for leftists? Certaintly--though their arguments still will lack citations and common sense.

(via Rightpundit)

More:

John Podhoretz has a good column on troop morale.

Still More:

From the 1/1/05 Washington Post:

The number of Iraqis making sure they are properly registered to vote has surged dramatically, officials said Saturday, calling the rise evidence of enthusiasm for the Jan. 30 elections despite continuing security concerns that have blocked the process in two provinces.

After a slow start to the six-week registration process that began Nov. 1, the number of voters making corrections to official voter lists more than doubled in the final week, according to a final tally quoted by election officials Saturday. . .

[I]n a poll for the International Republican Institute, more than 40 percent of residents surveyed in Sunni areas said they did not intend to vote . . . .

Among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and ethnic Kurds, more than 90 percent strongly intended to vote, according to the survey. Most Kurds follow Islam's Sunni branch but identify themselves by their ethnicity.

Hindawi, the election chief, said anecdotal evidence indicated that overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish areas produced much of the late surge in registration corrections. For example, the election office in Karbala, a Shiite holy city south of Baghdad, was forced to hire extra workers to accommodate the late rush, he said.