According to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which is partly funded by the State Department and has coordinated its work with the Coalition Provisional Authority, more than half of all Iraqis--including the Kurds--want an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, up from 17 percent last October.

But prominent media outlets didn't want to believe this. As John Burns of the New York Times explained:

Opinion polls, including those commissioned by the American command, have long suggested that a majority of Iraqis would like American troops withdrawn, but another lesson to be drawn from Saddam Hussein’s years is that any attempt to measure opinion in Iraq is fatally skewed by intimidation. More often than not, people tell pollsters and reporters what they think is safe, not necessarily what they believe. My own experience, invariably, was that Iraqis I met who felt secure enough to speak with candor had an overwhelming desire to see American troops remain long enough to restore stability.

Turn to yesterday's Times (9/11/11), and you saw this headline:

Many Iraqis Have Second Thoughts as U.S. Exit Nears

The article, by Michael Schmidt, doesn't given any sense of a shift in the broad opposition to the U.S. occupation. Instead, it's mostly an attempt--like others before it, documented in this piece in Extra! by Dahr Jamail--by the Times to convince readers that a series of anecdotes and interviews give a better measure of Iraqi opinion:

Though Iraqis have called for Americans to leave from the start of the occupation in 2003, the prospect of such a drastic drawdown, from the 48,000 troops here now, has revealed another side of the Iraqi psyche. This is a nation that distrusts itself, with little faith in the government’s own security forces or political leaders. It is as if people here never actually believed that the United States would leave, so all along demands for a pullout were never carefully weighed against the potential fallout.

So the "Iraqi psyche" doesn't really trust Iraqis and never thought about what would happen in the event of a "drastic drawdown" of U.S. troops a mere eight years after the occupation began.

Steinhauer sizes up the political backdrop-- the White House has strained relations with the current Israeli government, and there's more:

the Palestinians are weighing a request to the United Nations Security Council to support a bid for statehood, leaving Washington in the uncomfortable position of blocking such a unilateral move while supporting democracy movements in other Arab nations.

U.S. policy at the United Nations has historically been pro-Israel. There's no debate about that. So it's hard to see how this particular case would be "uncomfortable," since it's in keeping with a well-established pattern.

As for the supporting Arab democracy movements: Which one did the U.S. "support" when it really mattered? Not Tunisia, Bahrain or Egypt. Not Yemen. Not Saudi Arabia or Jordan. Certainly not Palestine. Syria? Not really.  I guess you could argue that the Libya War is "supporting" something.  But Steinhauer's vision of the U.S. as 'uncomfortably' fitting its rejection of Palestinian autonomy within a prevailing policy of encouragement  for Arab democracies is more media creation than diplomatic reality.

Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue as part of a deal to resolve the dispute over the federal debt ceiling, but they warned that there was little time to enact a comprehensive deal.

This would be a pretty remarkable development. So who are we talking about? Broder reports:

One of the senators, John Cornyn of Texas, said he would consider eliminating some tax breaks and corporate subsidies in the context of changes in the tax code, provided there was not an overall increase in taxes.

That sounds like no shift at all-- Cornyn went on to rule out any tax increases.

But he insisted that any changes in taxes be “revenue neutral,” meaning that the government would not take in any more money from individuals or businesses than it does now.

OK-- he supports raising revenues, so long as there is no increase in, well, revenues. Is there a clearer example Broder is thinking about?

The other senator, John McCain of Arizona, said he would be willing to consider some “revenue raisers” as part of a broad deal, but he refused to name specific measures.

He was specific about one thing:

“The principle of not raising taxes is something that we campaigned on last November, and the result of the election was that the American people didn’t want their taxes raised and they wanted us to cut spending,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

This article provides the evidence to refute its premise, which I guess is helpful.

House Passes a Bill to Expand Offshore Oil Drilling

JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON -- With rising gasoline prices and skyrocketing oil company profits as a backdrop, the House approved a bill on Thursday to force the Obama administration to accelerate oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia.

The 266-to-149 vote, largely along party lines, was a skirmish in the larger battle between Republicans and Democrats to capitalize on consumer anger over the price of gasoline, which has now passed $4 a gallon in most parts of the country.

Once again: Domestic drilling will do next to nothing to affect gas prices. (Mostly) Republican politicians want people to believe the opposite, and push policies to that end. But journalists should question the premise of these political maneuvers, not merely reinforce them.