Life is getting better all the time?

I'm not much of a believer in polls and I'm notoriously bad with numbers but even someone as math challenged as myself can see how The Times of London skewed the results of this poll to wrongly conjecture that the majority of Iraqis are optimistic or believe they're better off under the occupation.

Fortunately for all us, math whiz Cernig digs up the original report and crunches the numbers behind this propaganda piece. Unsurprisingly, he comes up with a more realistic result.

So now we can see that the majority of Iraqis think their country is either already in a civil war or teetering on the brink of one and that only 5% of Sunnis think that a descent into civil war is something that can never happen. That's not quites so good news, is it? Given that and the fact that the majority Shiites have numbers on their side in any such war, what is surprising is that marginally more Sunnis think that the situation will still improve when occupying troops leave than not!

Cernig then rounds up the reactions and the collective analysis and discovers the answers depend largely on where and who you ask.

But wait! It gets much worse than this! As we all know, the fighting varies in intensity throughout the country. Some spots are relatively calm, so of course perceptions of violence there are much less. Other places? Not so much peace. In Kirkuk, for example, ORB's study says that 83% believe Iraq is in or is close to a state of civil war! Over half do in Baghdad. 68% do in the North as a whole. (The Kirkuk conflict has gotten far less attention than it deserves by US media -- in part because it is much harder to field reporters there than in Baghdad.)

The Bush loyalists are course crowing madly about the Times' rosy assessment, thoughtfully provided by GOP friendly publisher Ruppert Murdoch, but they would do well to remember that spinning the numbers won't change the sum total of the carnage.