Who Is To Blame For The Abuses At Abu Ghraib?
This poll of Michigan voters has some interesting answers to that question. After weeks of pounding in the media and widespread calls for Donald Rumsfeld to resign, 30 percent of the Michigan voters blame individual soldiers, 18 percent blame the prison warden, 15 percent blame generals in charge of Iraq, 6 percent blame Rumsfeld, and 7 percent blame Bush. (Five percent say none of the above, 7 percent say all of the above, and 12 percent don’t know.) Similar polling data may explain why John Kerry has stopped discussing this issue in the campaign. Blaming Rumsfeld and Bush for the abuses makes sense to left wing activists and to journalists (two groups harder and harder to distinguish), but not to most voters. (The poll also shows that Bush is leading Kerry in Michigan by 4 points. In 2000, he lost the state by 5 points. As usual, I need to add some caveats. The sample size is small, and I am unfamiliar with the record of the polling organization.
