Another characterization of American public opinion

I stole this whole article from USATODAY.com.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow this week: “The president believes that in putting together a way forward he will be able to address a lot of the concerns that the American public has, the most important of which is, "What is your plan for winning?"

As I’ve noted here and here, it is difficult to find the evidence to support this characterization of American public opinion (Snow’s comment is similar to those made recently by other Bush administration officials, including President Bush himself and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.)

There have been at least nine national polls about Iraq conducted over the last two weeks. I don’t see the evidence that developing a plan for winning is Americans’ most important concern about Iraq.

Americans may be interested in knowing what the administration’s plans are. Americans may endorse the idea that winning in the abstract is a good thing. But the data suggest that the most important concern Americans have about Iraq is: What is the plan for getting the U.S. out of Iraq? There is near universal consensus across all the recent polls that Americans want a timetable for withdrawal, and would like that timetable to set a pace for American troops to be withdrawn within two years.

Yeah I'm lazy, but not so much this time because it took a lot of mouse clicks to steal this.

Cross posted at Brilliant at Breakfast