John Geer on the Web

He hypes the language, the numbers In a Democratic debate on Nov. 15, 2007, Bill Richardson had a startling way to support his view that the situation in Iraq is not improving: “What I’m saying, also, is that look at this statistic — 65 percent of the Iraqi people now say it’s okay to shoot an American soldier.”
Where did that number come from? Katie Roberts, Richardson’s deputy communications director, points to a BBC-sponsored poll of Iraqis in September 2007. BBC says the poll was conducted in face-to-face interviews with 2,212 people “in more than 450 neighborhoods across all 18 provinces of Iraq in August, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5%.” ... more