All evidence strongly points to the fact that Americans overwhelmingly oppose intervention in Syria. According to a Reuters poll conducted Aug. 19-24, only 9% are in favor of military action. A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll puts the number at 25%.
Obviously responses will vary depending on how the question is framed, but support for military intervention is, by any stretch of the imagination, a fringe, minority position.
But that hasn't stopped the American media from desperately trying to scrape together evidence to suggest otherwise. For instance, a CNN article posted a few hours ago and written by CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser claims:
Chemical weapons a game-changer on U.S. public opinion on Syria
As President Barack Obama weighs launching a military strike against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons, American public opinion over whether the U.S. should get involved appears conflicted.
The most recent national polling over the past few months suggests that most Americans, weary after more than a decade of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, don't favor getting its military involved in the bloody fighting in Syria. But some surveys also indicate that the public feels that Washington would be justified in using military action against Damascus if there was proof the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against their own people.
They go on to cite polling where respondents indicated that the U.S. would be "justified" in taking action in Syria if it was proven that the Syrian government used chemical weapons "to kill civilians."
The only problem is that you have to go all the way back to May, and then to December, 2012 to find these two polls — in other words, to a time when the facts on the ground were different, and Syria was not in the headlines like it is now. Calling a poll from almost a year ago a "game changer" is a strange way of characterizing things.
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