Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 2:27 PM -0500 3/26/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > It's mind-boggling for leftists such as Milan Rai to suggest that
> > Western pollsters, whose governments are belligerent occupiers in
> > Iraq, could get honest answers from the Iraqis whom they survey in
> > the occupied territory.  How would the Iraqis know if the
> > "pollsters" weren't informers?
>
> I interviewed Gallup's director of international programs, Richard
> Burkholder, who supervised their poll in Baghdad. He said that the
> surveyors were Iraqis and it was never revealed that the sponsor of
> the poll was an American firm.

That gives thinking Iraqi men and women -- especially those who are
involved in the armed and unarmed resistance in some fashion -- a
good reason to suspect that the Iraqi surveyors are informers working
for Americans.  That's Self Defense 101.

Are the current occupiers in Iraq the first belligerent occupier in
history to poll the occupied in the hope of having the world accept
the polling results as a justification for the occupation?
--
Yoshie

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