If you were President...

But who is to say what "the truth" actually is?

while I agree with your general statement about propaganda, you said the 'vast majority' of Americans bought into propaganda and that is just not true - unless you can prove me wrong.

15% of the population below poverty line do not make a vast majority - if indeed you'd think 'subjective information' comes from the internet and people without internet have no means to access accurate information (which of course is not true - information comes in many ways - even TV has a broad spectrum of opinions - not enough imo, but certainly not to warrant the 'vast majority' statement.

There are a few things to do though it can't be dealt with that easily. In no order:

- The banks and accounts through which terrorism money goes are known. Block the acounts and use the money to fight terror.
- I would keep the troops in Iraq but drastically change the attitude and show some respect to the people, their culture (that would be about 5000 years older than mine), their needs and opinions.
- Get the job done in Pakistan where we know the real terrorists are.
- Set up a real international cooperation under UN banner.
- Publically acknowledge that the american way of life is not the one and only worldwide standard for freedom and peace, and that imposing my view of freedom to anyone is sheer dictatorship.
- Reconsider the support to Israel.
- Trial the people that obviously used terrorist events to carry out unjustified projects for their own interests, betraying their own country and people.
- Install cooperation with developping countries rather than exploitation, corruption and manipulation.

I'd also propose a lot on the environmental issue that is at least as important and urgent as terror.

Ponrauil

i think there is propaganda in EVERY country of the world and everybody will believe some of it. but i also think that in most countries - and definitely also in the USA - there are enough ways to get different-viewpoint-information, and i also think that most people are quite well informed, especially if the subject is as important as a war that your country is fighting or something similar.

i agree that there are news channels that do only sent their own viewpoint and that politicians will always try to turn everything the way it makes them look good, but i think that only 10% or even less people will swallow that without further information from other sources.

and these 10% you will find in every country. these are usually not people that are not informed well because they don't have the means to inform themselves, it's usually people that don't want this information, because their viewpoint is similar to the propaganda viepoint and they ignore everything else.

i could go into examples of some individuals if my country blindly believing stuff shown on tv, but i'm not gonna do it. i'm aware that there are such people, and that's enough. and that's also enough to not blame any other country of being no well informed!!

first of all mouse talked about the internet and how people who have access to it don't believe propaganda or something like that.
and i said that not only the people who can't use the internet believe the propaganda. 15% at least can't but not only these. so i wasn't referring to them when i was talking about the vast majority.
if you want me to explain the word "vast" i will. before the war (based on polls i have seen) 1/3 supported the war, then the public opinion was split and just before the war over than 50% americans supported the government's actions. when the US attacked iraq almost 70% of the american people supported the invasion in iraq. now, as i said, that this war is going nowhere and it costs not only money but human lives and everyday, american soldiers are getting killed and the propaganda as it seems proved wrong the support of the americans has started to fall. this is something that the US government will have to face in the end.
before he proved wrong bush claimed that saddam had weapons of mass destruction now he claims that iraq has connections to al qaeda (so the US is in danger), that iraqis support the americans because they liberated them and that no matter the american victims, US will win the war. all these still have the power to make people support the war as in a recent research was found that over than 55% of american people believe that bush says the truth about the weapons of mass destruction and terrorism and over than 50% believe that the war was justified. it seems that more and more americans now tend not to believe the propaganda anymore. and i didn't say that all of you believed it or supported and justified the war.

Actually, I didn't say that at all. My exact words were:

This may have been true back in the day, but with the invention of the internet, you don't exactly need a stellar education nor mass amounts of time to research beyond the propaganda that is being served.

And that was in response to you writing:

I was just pointing out that in this day and age, it is much easier to be "informed" than it was in the past.

While I think the number of people supporting the war have been too high no matter what, I want to stress that polls are not always (in fact they are rarely) what they want you to believe.

Polls are simply answers to questions by a segment of a population.

If you are a business major you'll have several statistics classes that will demonstrate how inaccurate polls truly are and how I can come up with a poll supporting virtually anything I want.

Easy example. There are 4 international public accounting firms. These firms derive their revenues primarily from audit, tax, and consulting services. When I graduated college, I interviewed with all the firms (5 back then as Arthur Andersen was still around). Each firm told me that they were the biggest of the then 5 firms. How could that be??? Once you looked at what they were basing their determination on it was quite clear that each firm had a strength and compared to the other firms, that particular one was the best/biggest. Ie. One firm based their findings of being the biggest on the fact that they had the overall largest revenues. Another based it on number of employees worldwide, a third used the revenues in their tax practice to determine they were the biggest, one used the number of offices worldwide, you get the picture. Which one was truly the biggest? I have no clue - pick which way you want to look at it and you got your winner.

The same is true for the polls supporting the war. Some polls (and I am talking polls from very well respected media) asked questions like "do you think the US should declare war against terrorism?" as you might expect, the 'vast' majority would have said yes. Another question asked "do you support the US troops?", again, most people do support the troops regardless of their stance on the war. Etc., etc. Either party could have used the exact same poll to prove their point. There was no question that asked: "should the US invade Iraq to get Saddam" or whatever would be more appropriate. Additionally, you have to look at the base of the poll. Who are the people interviewed? Was it a phone interview at 3pm in the afternoon? Was a certain area code(s) used as the source of the poll participantes? If you do your poll at a certain time of day - does that mean that most people that are at home answering the phone at 3pm might be housewives of well-off husbands that seem to be predominantly voting republican? (I have no idea what the base was and what the sociological pattern of certain area codes or professions are, so these are mere examples). I can tell you that in Washington you fare pretty well to bet that anybody east of the Cascades is Republican and west of the Cascades is Democrate. So, let's just call the folks in eastern Washington. Actually, patterns like these have been used to increase the valid votes in counties in Florida, but that is getting too far off topic.

So, you see, polls are really not worth a lot, unless you have the gritty detail to form your OWN conclusion - not the conclusion THEY want you to go with.