POLL: 82% OF AMERICANS DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

by Steve Young

Before the ink on the "No WMD" NIE report had a chance to dry, neo-conservatives hit the talk show circuit and the broadcast Lords of Loud radio right went into overdrive to spin the information into a full scale intel overdrive. "Who are you going to believe...the NIE intelligence or the president's?"

Neoconworld sent out the hit squad of Podhorertz and Bolton to attack the reports and the firm of Limbaugh, Levin, and Hannity echoed the message: "Sham!"

Sixteen intel agencies are in collusion to embarrass and undermine the President.

The report was not fact, but agenda, driven.

Alan Dershowitz called it "Stupid Intelligence," which would seem to be also be the present condition of the American voter.

In a Rasmussen Poll, only 18 percent of voters are reported to be buying the report's conclusion, with 66 percent believing Iran is still building WMD. You say that they must have only polled Fox News viewers? Think again while I splash cold water on the idea that a Democratic administration is a Jan 20, 2009 slam dunk. Only 29 percent of liberal voters believe the report.

Hey, poll-ees! Were you on some sort of narcotic bender right before the poll? Does the word "Iraq" and 4,000 dead American soldiers bring anything to mind? The slow down in troop deaths getting to you? Six years in a bloody quagmire not enough? Or is it that you're pushing the "only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history" envelope?

With these numbers, I don't blame the President for continuing to spin the report like a drunken dreidel (my wife didn't think I could connect this story with the never-ending Chanukah holiday). Why not? What hasn't worked for the country, seems to have worked just swell for this president and his many policy failures.

Maybe it's that the entire idea of rapprochement through diplomacy isn't dangerous enough for a country born out bullets, blood and John Wayne movies.

It isn't that we shouldn't be concerned by whackjobs around the world. But that we choose to believe a bunch of right wing whackjobs right here in America is what is so troubling. It leaves one thinking that we may be just blind, deaf and dumb enough to elect the new warmonger next time. And if we are to believe the Rasmussen numbers, my guess is that is just who we'll find ourselves with sometime a little more than thirteen months from now.

Intel wrong. Neo-con whackjobs who have gotten it wrong right from day one, right.

Amazin'.