Sandwalk: Iraqis say they were better off under rule of Saddam Hussein

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Iraqis say they were better off under rule of Saddam Hussein

Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies/Gulf Research Center conducted face-to-face interviews with 2,000 Iraqi adults living in major cities. The interviews were conducted in November 2006. The margin of error in such a poll is 3.1%.

According to GlobalResearch.ca the results for the question "Do you feel the situation in the country is better today or better before the U.S.-led invasion?" are:

                    Better today      5%
                    Better before    90%
                    Not sure            5%

Let's hope this puts an end to the oft-repeated myth that the Iraqis are better off after the American invasion than they were under Saddam Hussein. They don't think so.

[Hat Tip: Rhosgobel: Radagast's home]

5 comments :

Anonymous said...: And I'm sure if asked a typical German in 1945, they would have claimed to have been better off back in '38 when Hitler was in power.

So what's your point?; Thursday, January 04, 2007 1:27:00 PM
Anonymous said...: Pretty short-sighted of you, Larry. I don't intend on insulting you personally with this comment, but this is just inane. What is this, an exercise in values clarification?; Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:35:00 PM
Anonymous said...: No one ever asks those who were killed if they are better off.; Thursday, January 04, 2007 4:29:00 PM
Larry Moran said...: No one ever asks those who were killed if they are better off.

We don't know that for sure. Several hundred have been murdered since last November. Maybe some of them were interviewed by the pollsters?; Thursday, January 04, 2007 5:06:00 PM
Anonymous said...: So what's your point?

The point is that the administration as well as it's fellow travelers on the neocon right have been claiming that the Iraqis were better off being liberated from an oppressive tyrant. Setting aside that it looks as though an oppressive secular regime is simply being replaced by an oppressive Islamic theocracy (where have we seen this before? Iraq's neighbor to the east comes to mind.), most Iraqis do not agree with the assessment, going on 5 years after the fact to boot.; Friday, January 05, 2007 8:48:00 PM

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The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

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Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

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The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

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Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

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TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

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The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

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Thursday, January 04, 2007

Iraqis say they were better off under rule of Saddam Hussein

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