>holy dead guy on a stick! A surveyor in the u.s. would be creaming
>his or her jeans for that kind of response rate. As you point out,
>they're critical to the u.s., so it's not exactly like they're doing
>it out of fear!
>
>Methinks they want a chance to be heard.
That's what Burkholder said on my radio show last fall, talking about Gallup's first survey. People kept talking beyond the alloted 70 minutes, and would say things like, "You should talk to my brother-in-law too!" He surmised that no one had asked Iraqis for their opinions in decades, and there was a lot of pent-up demand to talk.
I'm a little surprised Yoshie - who last week was critical of urban elites' disparaging generalizations about the American heartland - has such a monolithic view of American society. It could be that there really are some honest social scientists who want to know what Iraqis think lurking among the belligerent/complacent imperial mass.
Doug