Many a Goan living in the US (mind you I am not referring to you Panduranga), feel that they are right, vote for the GOP, chew gum (a criterion for being Yankee) and pounce on me when I criticize the US policies. I have seen this. It is a fallacy to think that Americans and this includes Canadians, have average intelligence. I have met poor dressed Indians in India who have better knowledge and understanding about the issues concering the issues facing the current world. What is mind boggling is that politicians like Trent Lott and John McCain are so ignorant even though the latter comes from a distinguished background.
When Scott Ritter who is American and who headed a UN team disputes the views of Bush (claiming that the Americans even were spying on the Iraqis) no one listens. I have long known the shallow mind of the Americans.
It was once said that the 'gentlemen' of England, when they saw that they were losing the game, changed the rules. The game plan for inspections in Iraq were already laid down after the Gulf War and the weapon inspectors found very little. If there was anything, they destroyed what they considered dangerous.
Now, Bush is attempting to change the rules in the middle of the game. He has provided the public with nothing new but his rantings are the same. He is MAD and the American public ought to confine him to history. Remember that Bush will make the supremacy of the US as a superpower the shortest in history. There was nothing startling in his speech of yesterday. I am amazed that his lackey Blair is thinking now.
Edgar Martins
>It is only the people who listen to Imus in the morning and O'Reilly
>on Fox, in the evening, that are for this war! There have been a lot
>of demonstrations against this war, in the US, over the weekend.
>
Very true! What is even worse is that the electronic media as well as
the major print outlets are being influenced by pollsters and spin
doctors who are on duty 365 days a year for the special interests and
political parties. A pollster can ask a question to always get a
desired answer by carefully choosing the priming information that
he/she provides the respondent before he asks a key question. If you
ask anyone if they would want to live in a world without Saddam
Hussein after giving them a brief glimpse of his biodata, they would
invariably say yes. If you follow that up by asking whether they
would support a just war to get rid of him, most people would say yes
again. People hate to be caught in inconsistencies.
All the major polling organizations are for hire. They will in most
cases give you exactly the information you want. I am always amazed
by the kind of numbers that they generate, and I cannot believe that
intelligent people take them seriously. I think politicians and the
so-called TV pundits have a poor understanding of simple statistics
and surveys. The classic example is that of Dwight Eisenhower who
could not believe that almost 50% of Americans had below average
intelligence. I think he asked what the Government could do to reduce
that number.
Cheers,
Santosh
