Currently on Yahoo news there is a story running about a recent poll of Americans, attempting to gauge US awareness of the death toll of Iraqi civilians, and sound the depths of US support for criticism of the war in Iraq in the face of those numbers:
http://news.yahoo.com/...
I read this story and became very, very angry. I was incensed because the part of the poll that asks whether one is more or less likely to support criticism of the war in Iraq if one has had an Iraq-related military death in the family or if one has a servicemember currently in Iraq seemed disingenuous at best (poorly worded on the part of the poll preparers) and, at worst, a manipulative leading of respondents down a path of ahistorical and unAmerican superficiality in the matter of our first amendment rights.
The poll seems to assume that if x percentage of Americans don't think it's right to criticize the Iraq war, then the other x percentage should think better of it out of respect for those Americans who, having loved ones on the field of battle, don't want to speak out.
Follow me below the fold.
Read More