Liberal Media Ignores Poll Showing U.S. Troops Do Not Support Escalation

From the Center for American Progress:

Last week, the Military Times released a new poll of 6,000 active duty U.S. military personnel. Thirty-eight percent of the troops polled said the United States should send more troops to Iraq. Thirty-nine percent believe we should maintain current levels or reduce the number of troops, including 13 percent who support complete withdrawal. Only 35 percent said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The media has all but ignored the poll, even though newspapers and television news channels "all lavished extensive coverage on another, completely unscientific measure of the troops' opinions of a 'surge.'" "A couple of weeks back, Defense Secretary Robert Gates convened a photo-op sitdown with around a dozen troops to listen to their opinions. Mysteriously, all of those assembled agreed that they wanted more troops. The thoughts of this handful of soldiers were granted extensive coverage by The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN and Reuters." Now, the "the San Jose Mercury News and the Seattle Times were the only U.S. papers to run stories of their own" on the poll, Steve Benen writes for the Washington Monthly, while Reuters and UPI mentioned the poll in wire stories what "were not widely picked up. ... Broadcast outlets were a bit better, with CNN and ABC mentioning the poll on the air."