Iraq's Untold Story: Iraqis Say Life Is Good, Will Get Better

Via Noel Sheppard's blog at Newsbusters, we learn of an unheralded poll:

There’s a new poll out, done by Oxford Research International for ABC News and TIME magazine. Unfortunately, unless you were watching “This Week” on ABC this morning, or this evening’s “World News Tonight”(video link to follow), you likely missed it.

ABC online says:

An ABC News poll in Iraq, conducted with Time magazine and other media partners, includes some remarkable results: Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.

I didn't notice it in the Post, though the BBC managed to find it. Sheppard:

Update: I guess the BBC thinks this is newsworthy, as it just posted an article at its website entitled “Survey Finds Optimism in Iraq”:

“Interviewers found that 71% of those questioned said things were currently very or quite good in their personal lives, while 29% found their lives very or quite bad.  When asked whether their lives would improve in the coming year, 64% said things would be better and 12% said they expected things to be worse.”

The article continued:

“The BBC News website's World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says the survey shows a degree of optimism at variance with the usual depiction of the country as one in total chaos. The findings are more in line with the kind of arguments currently being deployed by US President George W Bush, he says.”

Quick, somebody tell somebody tell Froomkin; his head will explode.

There are plenty of misgivings expressed about various issues in the poll, but the fact that the vast majority of Iraqis are magnificently positive about their prospects could easily justify a banner headline hooked to the current elections. I mean, I run Iraq's Untold Story five days a week and I wouldn't have predicted a poll generating these results. Which is what makes comments like this from Howard Kurtz's column today so entertaining:

Marjorie Miller, foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, says it's "a little hard to focus on positive stories when 10 men have just been blown up or bombs are going off every day. I think we do a pretty good job of balancing it."

No doubt you do.