Thanks, Obama and Bill Clinton.

250 people out of 330 million; that's a very representative sample size.

Going on a face to face interviews in the office today 100% of respondents say this study is likely bullshit.

@3 Not at all, the sample size is very small and its pretty easy to see how that could be a problem. Both in the office and with this survey.

But good job in pointing our your own stupidity concerning studies and sample sizes. please go take some basic math classes before you embarrass yourself again.

That should have been 33 million for the population of iraq, so that would be .00076% of the population

@2: Okay you dumb goober, you're wrong on several counts.
One, this is a survey of IRAQIS, not AMERICANS (reading comprehension is key) and so the total population is 33 million; you're off by an order of magnitude. Two, whether a sample is representative of a population has nothing to do with the size of the sample and everything to do with how the sample was selected. Three, AND THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART, a 250 person sample of a 33,000,000 population (assuming no sampling bias) gives you a 99% confidence interval of ±8%.
Now, there are some issues with the study, given that they only surveyed young people and that the sampling probably underrepresents more rural areas (due to Iraq being basically a shithole these days), but you're not addressing those. All you're doing is showing how ignorant you are of how statistics works.

This is why I come to SLOG, for the kind of hard-hitting, incisive analysis that I could get from the comment section of Daily Kos. Kudos.

@6 learn how to read you'll be better for it and be able to understand my correction in comment 4. So you can fuck right off.

You might also understand that face to face might not be the best way of selecting a representative sample.And the article itself claims an error rate of 1.65, so yes i'd say the study is could be a bit fucked up.

Why keep ruminating over this?

My greatest regrets about this primary process is that Sanders hasn't made Clinton suffer even more for her stupid foreign policy views. Maybe he's staying away from the issue for sound strategic reasons. But getting aced by Obama in 2008 wasn't near enough punishment.

I think Clinton is the better nominee for various structural reasons but its in spite of her very bad instincts in a number of important areas.

@4 I don't often say this. I think it. But I rarely say it because it's not nice. But. Good lord you are a very, very dumb person. I mean despite your glaring errors in math and lack of understanding of how statistical data works there are just the simple errors in logic.

The Iraq war caused anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqi casualties. Mostly innocent people.

The occupation resulted in nearly 2.5 million impoverished Iraqi refugees that flooded and destabilized the entire region. The war also resulted in a shattered economy with an unemployment rate that peaked at 30% - it's about 24% now among young males. A quarter of young men unemployed.

So. With all that in mind you think, logically, the US would be considered NOT an enemy?

Anyone who thinks people don't hate the country that is bombing them is so deluded there's no point communicating with them. You'll have more success training your cat.

"why keep ruminating over this."

@11 Again, I hate to be rude, but this is the statement of another very, very dumb person.

We "ruminate" over this because the invasion and occupation of Iraq is the single biggest strategic foreign policy error of the last forty years.

Because we spent over $1.7 trillion dollars - TRILLION - for this debacle and are STILL spending billions every year.

And from which we are seeing a destabilized Syria, the blossoming of a massively powerful terrorist army called ISIS lead by former Baathist Iraqi generals and populated mostly by displaced Iraqi's. A tumult that is also leading to refugees flooding into the EU, our strategic partners.

A better question is why are you so eager to forget and thus repeat this travesty.

@13, @17, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she changed her mind. So again, why still ruminate over it?

I trust that if Hillary gets indicted by the FBI and drops out, and Biden jumps in, that you will all rake Joe over the coals as well, because he also voted for the Iraq war resolution.

@18 Pardon me, but are you being obtuse or just a troll? You've been given all the reason a moral person needs to "ruminate."

Why do you want to forget this? It's not something that is "over" it's an ongoing disaster of epic proportions.

Nobody has ever been held accountable.

Sigh. I note with some depression that the loudest cheerleaders for that immoral war were also the ones that demanded it's rational detractors keep silent and now are so eager to forget their complicity.

Just another more cowardly version of "Yesterday is too late. Today is too soon. Who knows about tomorrow."

@21 not to mention the underfunded veterans hospitals all over this country that will be treating the thousands of traumatic brain injuries and multiple amputees for the next sixty years as a result of that war.

Just as a thought experiment we should wonder what it would be like if we based all political decisions on a poll done in Iraq. Equal rights for woman? Marriage equity? Gun control? Punishment for shoplifting? I wish we hadn't invaded but I not sure my opinion is based on person on the street interviews in Baghdad.

@20: History lays the blame for the Iraq invasion on George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton, like so many of her democratic colleagues in the Senate joined the Republicans in a vote to authorize severe consequences for Saddam Hussein's noncompliance of over 20 UN resolutions in disclosing weapons of mass destruction. That was the context, that was the vote. Obsessing over that is indeed ruminating.

@21: Nobody's being flippant. The current consequences remain very much on the agenda of the next president.

There is no venue to address one's angst over history. We can only work for a better future.

@24, I just hate it when I agree with you. This is nothing but a hit piece that Ansel fashioned in about 3 minutes.

@17,21,11, et al. -- " the invasion and occupation of Iraq is the single biggest strategic foreign policy error of the last forty years."
Well, see, that really depends... on what information one has, and what one's goals are.
For simple people, like your or I, yes the Iraq Occupation was/is stridently abusive, horrific, anti-democratic, and earnestly callous in its impact on the things that actually count: People, peace, stability. Both for Iraqis and Americans.

But for Globalist Realpolitikers, like Clinton or Putin or Xi, for whom human beings are merely acceptable statistical losses, or populations to control, it was a ripping success. It wasn't an error at all, it was the successful outcome of a specific goal-set.

We simple folk just aren't privy to the actual goals.

We were told a bag of lies that would provide sufficient justification & uncertainty such that there would be no effective popular opposition. Millions of people around the world "marched peacefully" against the proposed attack/occupation... but attack we did anyway. Peaceful Protest did effectively nothing to change the course of events, and 100s of thousands have since died brutal deaths.

We can, however, infer the goals from the outcomes...

"We have fueled a generation of terrorists in the name of our national security "
And that is one clear outcome that the 'elites' (barf) most likely knew would happen. We had already fomented jihadi opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s, we knew those groups would react to our occupation of Iraq.
Now "in the name of our nat'l security" is another phrase that can mean different things based on your POV. "Terrorists" are quite useful for our Nat'l Security because local fear of 'terror' helps increase police state powers, and keeps our population scared, and therefore manipulable. Terrorists support/provide justification for our National Security apparatus.

And that's just one goal achieved, there are several others.

In any case, we can assume that Hilary Clinton, in voting for the Iraq Debacle & then reiterating her support in 2008, was for this goal.

That's why it's important to 'ruminate' over this. Electing Clinton as prez means that we'll have a leader who is overtly in support of fabricating/inciting 'enemies of the state' in order to keep the home population under control.

@2, As my statistics profs have often said, "statistics is NOT MATH." Sure, it uses numbers, but that's where the similarity ends. The rules are completely different. And all the formulas we use are well-researched means of getting to know, and ultimately trust, some very large, unwieldy data sets (like the opinions of Millions of young people in a country).

As far as sampling, let me explain statistical sampling in a way that you can understand. Taking a survey of a large, diverse population is like tasting chili. In order to get a good idea of what a pot of chili tastes like, you only need to stir the chili well, and taste one spoonful. A good surveyist has typically spent years in grad school learning how to "stir the chili." And probably wrote their dissertation on different ways of doing that. (Actually, I had a friend whose dissertation WAS in tasting the whole pot and comparing that with sampling techniques. Turns out you get about 5% more information that way...But, blech...you ate a whole pot of chili! (or wasted a LOT of time, as it were)). What I'm saying is, statisticians have data to back up their sampling techniques, have ways of "blinding" the surveys, and even have ways of measuring errors. So,
1) I sympathize with your gut instincts, here, but they are quite wrong, and
2) It's just impractical to do it any other way.

By the way, similar surveys were taking in other Islamic countries, with the following results, "Roughly 85 percent of those living in the Gulf [Arab States] say that they consider the U.S. to be an ally, with another 66 percent expressing the same view in North Africa." Are you going to discount the surveys of countries we didn't invade, as well? Why or why not? What data would please you here?

@28, don't forget cheap oil...and feeding the gaping maw of the military/industrial complex (who are also, conveniently, the war-deciders).

@10: Bite my college-educated ass. I loaded the page, took the time to actually pull the numbers properly and make sure what I said in my post was correct (unlike some people apparently) and then submitted my post. When I wrote the post, your half-assed correction had not been published.
Way to distract from your ignorance of statistical methods.

@10: Also, you twit, interviews were conducted in person, but that's not how they selected their sample population. Read the goddamn methodology.

@26: "Hillary Clinton" are the first two words of this post. Nor did I insinuate "ruminating" with the plight of Iraq now; it was in regard to the 2002 vote. You're extrapolating what I said; although I should have been clearer in @11.

@23, about those "equal rights for women"? Arab youth are very much for it. When asked, "HOW STRONGLY DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE STATEMENT?
“THE ARAB LEADERS SHOULD DO MORE TO IMPROVE THE PERSONAL FREEDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS OF WOMEN” The "agree" answers ranged from 67 to 90% depending on the country, with very little difference between men and women, and with only about 18% overall disagreeing with that statement.

https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/site… see p, 29.

@10, Oh my god, Dude, Dr.Zaius is being way too polite...1.65% (p. 6) is an awesomely LOW level of error.

@32 - Bullshit. She's read the Daily Intelligence Briefing, she knows what's going on in the world.

@30,31 - Oh sure, there are plenty of other reasons, but they were too much to go into in that post. And I think you are wrong about 'cheap oil' too, that wasn't an actual goal.
Here are some others:

1. Take Iraq off the Euro, & stabilize the price of oil -- Iraq had begun selling its oil in Euros, in flagrant opposition to the status quo where all oil is sold only in U$D to everyone. Euro-oil sales undermines the US dollar's stability. Iraq was also alternately opening & closing its oil spigots, causing the price of oil to fluctuate wildly. This was done to thumb their nose at the US because of the ORIGINAL "Iraq War" under Bush I, and the "No Fly Zones" maintained for a decade by the US over the northern and southern 1/3rds of the country, an operation which periodically bombed various Iraqi military installations with impunity.

2. Protect Israel -- Iraq paid compensation to Palestinian families who's sons died in the ongoing conflict with Israel, and quietly gave them weapons too. Iraq was also attempting to build a giant motherfucking gun, designed by Hugo Bull, to shoot at Israel. Mossad assassinated Bull, but the US invasion ensured all anti-Israel projects were eliminated.

3. Surround Iran -- Iran is huge and powerful, and needed to be kept in check esp. for the Saudis. The US was also excited to establish a greater presence in the MidEast (so many new bases!) to counter China's 'global chessboard' moves in Africa and south Asia. In particular China has an enormous deal with Iran for LNG. They definitely didn't want China moving in to the MidEast, bcz oil. Success. This also went a long way to keeping Iran from getting The Bomb, which no one really wants.

4. Protect oil pipelines -- Areas around the Caspian Sea have loads of oil and new routes to getting it out were being created, largely by Russia to the Black Sea. US-affiliate companies wanted to build pipelines overland to the Persian Gulf, so that they could avoid/usurp Russian control of the oil coming from that region. Much of the invasion of Afghanistan was specifically to protect those new pipelines from near-daily bombings.

5. Stoke the flames of jihadism -- Osama et. al. had already bombed the USS Cole, and a US embassy & made plenty of "US Out of M.E.!" statements. Since we ourselves helped Osama come to power in A'stan during the 80s operations against the Soviet occupation, we knew his capabilities & were well aware of the organization he had built. Destabilizing the Middle East plays into the hands of authoritarians, like Saudi Arabia & Israel & Egypt (all allies of ours), and diminishes or eliminates any opportunity for any actual democracy breaking out, which no government really wants, especially them. Keeping things very messy provides a justification for our ongoing presence/occupation. It also guarantees an environment where guerrilla/terrorist armies can form and train up, creating a perfect bogeyman ("Terrorism!") and enough 'random' guerrilla attacks to keep the war at home going, stifling dissent and ensuring enough resources to keep local activists & leftists under the boot.

Remember, 18 out of the 20 WTC hijackers were Saudi citizens, as was Osama himself. Osama actually came from a well-to-do Saudi family, with almost definite ties to the monarchy there.

Dan Savage: "Say "YES" to War on Iraq"

@31 War NEVER makes oil cheap. The invasion of Iraq caused huge spike in oil prices.

We HAVE cheap oil now because of over production. The invasion was over CONTROL of oil. And when oil prices go up? Hey. Great for oil and energy service companies like Halliburton.

@39 they do not think that far in advance.

@38 THAT — the fact that the editors of this paper (that now come out so much in favor of Clinton) were also so blindly and stupidly in favor of the immoral invasion or Iraq, is definitely worth ruminating.

None of us should ever forget that our so-called "Alternative Weekly" were war mongering dipshits and failed us spectacularly when it actually counted.

@40 "Cheap" as in demanding cheap technology to extract and refine by opposition to shale oil or deep sea oil that is very expensive to produce. Iraq has the 2nd largest reserves of cheaply available oil on the planet. Bush invaded Iraq when peak oil was on the horizon. Contrary to popular belief (actually misinformation), peak oil isn't the "end of oil", it's the beginning of the end of cheap oil because there will always be oil to be produced at uneconomical cost. So, yes Iraq was invaded in an attempt to control the flow of cheap oil to world markets because as we saw after 2008 the world economy isn't going anywhere at $100 per barrel.

@44: Um, peak oil and related issues have a lot less to do with who controls the oil and a lot more to do with known oil reserves and how good current extraction technology is.

@45 "Um, peak oil and related issues have a lot less to do with who controls the oil"

um, where did you read this? Not in my comment because it isn't there.