We all know what we think. Week in, week out, we hear what the British view of the war in Iraq is, and the polls tell us that we are becoming ever more sceptical. We know what the Americans think. We know what the French think of it all (not a lot). Now, for the first time, we have a scientific attempt to survey the opinion of the people whose country was fought over, and in whose name the battle of Baghdad took place.
To look at the polling returns from Iraq is frankly to have a sense of relief; relief not just that they do not all want an instant return to power by Saddam Hussein. It is a relief to hear the voices of those who are really engaged in the matter. These are the voices of people whose lives — unlike ours — have been changed fundamentally by the American and British military action. These are the people who have most to lose, and to win. Theirs are the voices of common sense. After all the puffed-up self-hating polemics that follow the successful prosecution of any war by a democracy, it is welcome to find such rationality in the calculations of the Iraqi citizen.
This survey cannot claim to be carried out in such aseptic perfection as one conducted in, say, a Tesco car park. But it is a survey that has become more urgent with every passing week, as it has become evident to the public that this was a war at least partly fought in bad faith. It is hard to think of any episode more corrosive of trust in politicians than the business of the weapons of mass destruction.
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