A new CNN poll asked the public whether Iraq was worth going to war over. 61 percent said No, while only 35 percent responded Yes - almost the exact opposite from when asked in 2003.
And what is the reason for this plummeting of support? Well, on Thursday, Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) said he knows the answer -
"When you look at the condition that our troops ran before D-day and all the things that went wrong, 24-hour news coverage would have convinced an overwhelming majority of American people, forget it, pull the plug, let the Nazis have it."
Yes, in BondWorld, it's TV's fault.
After airing Bond's comments on a special edition of its "This Week at War" program Saturday, CNN anchor John Roberts asked correspondent Dana Bash, "Dana, does he have a point there?"
I sat up, ears perked in anticipation of a reporter getting the chance to defend her profession against a "The TV Made Me Do It" proponent. Indeed, the very name of CNN's special broadcast was - "Year Five Begins." We're talking starting the fifth year of the Iraq War. No doubt Ms. Bash would live up to her name.
Instead, what she meekly responded was -
"Sure. There's no question about that."
Oh, dear. Oh, my. Oh, no.
That's not the answer. The answer is -
"No, John, Senator Bond doesn't have a point, unless you consider that spike at the top of his head. There is no comparison between D-Day and the public's reaction to Iraq. None. We're going into our fifth year of truly horrible, unrelentingly bad news. D-Day lasted hours. I mean, yipers, John, the entire freaking Cotentin Peninsula was secured in five days. And Senator Bond bizarrely wants to compare that to us going into Year Five of the Iraq War? If 24-hour news existed during D-Day, the Utah Beach invasion would have been over before those 24 hours were up! If the D-Day invasion had started at the beginning of Anderson Cooper 360, Omaha Beach would have been over before he'd gotten up to 180. If Senator Bond thinks public disenchantment with the Iraq War disaster is the 'fault' of TV - assuming he is thinking - he probably also blames TV for the death of Anna Nicole Smith because of all the bad coverage it's gotten. What Senator Bond is suggesting is lunatic, John. Sorry."
That's what she should have said. Kit Bond is caught in a morass and desperately looking for any scapegoat to his party's disaster.
The Iraq War is going into its fifth year.
If the D-Day invasion has lasted until its fifth year with no end in sight and 20,000 more troops added to Normandy beach, the public reaction - even with no television - would have been so operatically gargantuan that today's revolt against the Bush Administration would appear like one of Tony Show's "commas in history " by comparison.
If the D-Day invasion had failed, news or no news, then you can make a pretty fair bet that the Secretary of Defense would have been replaced, General Eisenhower and every planning advisor would have been replaced, and the new leadership would have figured a way to exit the quagmire and come up with a better plan to get into Europe. But here's the really cool thing - all those people knew what they were doing! And the plan worked! And they breached much of the German's Atlantic Wall in only a day! And they landed on the mainland of Europe, swept across the entire continent - and in less than a year defeated the Axis forces and won the war and returned home!
And the Iraq War is going into its fifth year.
Kit Bond suggests that today's news coverage "would have convinced an overwhelming majority of American people" that the D-Day invasion wasn't worth it, apparently unable to handle a whopping 24-hours of difficult news. Well, the American public has been handling years of horrific, 24-hour news from Iraq, and they still re-elected George Bush (albeit in one of those now, mass "What in God's name was I thinking??!!" moments). And many would probably still cut the President some slack if there was just a semblance of good news, a reasonable plan, or an exit strategy. But there isn't any of that.
The Iraq War is going into its fifth year.
Senator Bond (R-MO) dares to imply that if D-Day had lasted more than a day, that Americans would have said, "let the Nazis have it," and all because of TV. What a despicable, pathetic, small-minded view of America and Americans. Just because Kit Bond (R-MO) and his cronies might feel that, it's no reason to impose their own warped perspective of the American public on the rest of the country.
The public support of the Iraq War has plummeted because the war has been a pointless disaster with a daily-worsening situation, no way out, and 20,000 more Americans being thrown into that bottomless pit. If you pull back the curtain and see that there is no great and powerful Wizard of Oz, but only a befuddled, little man manipulating levers and tricking people, it's not the fault of the dog that pulled away the curtain that the reality behind the drapes is what it is. And that reality, which Americans have determined all on their own, is really very bad.
The Iraq War is going into its fifth year.