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I think General Patraeus, is doing what a general does in the armed forces, he says how it is , instead of sugar coating everything . these ensurgents are like cancer, each cell has to be distroyed or the cancer just keeps coming back, the biggest problem I think our troops are facing is lack of support from us. Dont bitch about something enless you are willing to be the one to change it , and i think all these appinionated people, need to step back and think real hard about what would happen if we pull completely out? if there is resistants now while we are there, and they are killing us and their own people left and right with no remorse of who they hurt(the college students, the market place bombings were children are playing,etc) if we just up and left , we are leaving these people like sitting ducks to just be massacred. and just leave them free to hurt us with another major attack, or other countries. we are not at war with a country we are at war with a extreme idealist.

You make an excellent point, data analyst. The discerning reader would, I hope, draw the same conclusion you did about the ratio of positive to negative responses.

We're keenly aware of the wording issue. Well, I am, anyway. Joel can speak for himself. When I write up these polls, I try to keep a couple of things in mind. First, I want to have more than just a couple of constrained options if I can. In the case of this poll, "yes," "no" and "I don't know/undecided" weren't sufficient. It's often "Yes, but..." or "No, because..." There are at least two possible yes answers to the question. A war critic or skeptic could have his or her mind changed by Petraeus's testimony. A war supporter is unlikely to have his or her mind changed, but answer affirmatively.

You're probably right about that other option, though. I'll keep that in mind for the next poll.

I added the fourth option as a bit of a nose-tweak, since I included a link to the Petraeus report right below it. Really, at this point, people have no excuse. The information is out there.

But you must know, too, that these polls are anything but scientific. The samples are self-selecting and, because we allow anonymous users to participate, demographically skewed. The polls serve no greater purpose other than to "take the temperature" of RedBlueAmerica readers and to spark discussion.