by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, March 26, 2002 3:10 P.M. EST

McPolling
Maybe USA Today should get out of the business of commissioning and reporting polls. Last month, as we noted, the paper ran a notoriously flawed "survey" of nine Muslim countries; just this weekend the Washington Post added to the criticism with an article titled "The Poll That Didn't Add Up."

Now the paper (along with CNN and Gallup) has produced a poll that purports to gauge Americans' views on overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But both the poll and the paper's coverage of it are maddeningly muddled. "Americans split on ousting Saddam," reads the blurb on USA Today's homepage. So that means roughly equal numbers of Americans want to oust the Iraqi dictator and don't want to, right? Well, no. If you go to the actual article, it's headlined "Poll: Americans Want Saddam Out, but Split on How." When you look at the poll results (question 12), it turns out that 60% of those polled said "the removal of Saddam Hussein from power" is "a very important foreign policy goal of the U.S.," and another 28% said "somewhat important." Americans split, indeed.

On the issue of how to oust Saddam, things get even more muddled. Here are the findings of question 9:

• 67% of those polled favor "using military air strikes but no U.S. ground troops."
• 53% back "arming and training Iraqi opposition forces but not using U.S. forces directly."
• 46% support "using U.S. ground troops to invade Iraq."

These numbers add up to 166%. Now of course, sometimes a poll can offer various options and come up with a total of more than 100% if poll subjects are allowed to choose multiple options. But in this case all three of the options are mutually contradictory. It makes no sense to say you're against using U.S. forces directly and in favor of sending in ground troops.

In any case, what's the point of even asking this question? A public-opinon poll can gauge political support for a prospective invasion of Iraq. But do USA Today and Gallup really think they're going to get intelligent answers if the call random phone numbers and ask whoever picks up to opine about military strategy?

Goldberg's Challenge
In a Slate "dialogue," The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg--whose blockbuster report from northern Iraq is at long last available online--issues the following challenge to America's center-left:

Kanan Makiya, the great Iraqi writer and dissident, argues that the Baghdad regime is similar in ideology and practice to the European fascist dictatorships of the 1930s. This makes it fundamentally different from every other ridiculous Third World dictatorship currently holding a seat in the U.N. General Assembly. Saddam's Iraq is the quintessence of a security state, built on paranoia and homicide and Big Brother surveillance; its charismatic and megalomaniacal Great Leader thinks of himself as father of his people; his regime engages in racialist thought; it commits genocide; it seeks Lebensraum; and on and on and on.

So, what is conservative, or neoconservative, about Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle (or Dick Cheney) standing in the front line against fascism? I didn't realize that the fight against fascism is solely the province of the neoconservative movement. Isn't the real story here not the muscular unilateralism of the neocons, but the moral abdication of the moderate left, which is missing a chance to defeat a genocidal fascist?

'The American Way'

"The evil ones didn't know who they were attacking. They thought we would . . . roll over. They thought we were so materialistic and self-absorbed that we wouldn't respond. They probably thought we were going to sue them."--President Bush, March 21

"Whether or not we invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, let's go about this the American way. Let's sue him."--Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (link requires registration), March 26

A Ghost in Khost?
"Afghan military officials working with US forces in Khost say that the top two leaders of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, have both been seen in the area over the past eight days," the Christian Science Monitor reports, though cautioning that "local forces may have their own motives for reporting a bin Laden sighting."

Ananova.com picks up a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that novelist Salman Rushdie is of the view that, as Ananova puts it, "Osama Bin Laden's vanity will eventually lead to his capture." The author says of the evildoer: "He loves being on television, but he hasn't been for some time, so he must be suffering under that. He'll send another tape, which will offer more clues." Rushdie, who has been targeted for assassination by Iran since 1989, has firsthand experience with the dangers of publicity.

Al Qaeda's Germs
"U.S. troops have found traces of anthrax at suspected al-Qaida biological weapons sites, but the samples are so small they don't prove the terrorist network could use the deadly germ as a weapon," the Associated Press reports.

Back to Abnormal
Well, so much for the "Saudi peace plan." The New York Times reports that Arab ministers meeting in Beirut have nixed the only concession to Israel that was included in the proposal:

By late tonight, the word "normalization," which Syria abhors, had been rejected as the term used to describe future relations with Israel in the peace initiative, according to officials involved. Lebanon was pushing to include a reference to the fact that any peace would involve all Palestinian refugees leaving the countries that host them, they said.

The draft of the Arab League resolution stipulates that in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders, the Arab countries promise only "to consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over and to reach a treaty to cement this between them and Israel."

At the same time, the Arabs are offering the Palestinians financial incentives to commit more violence against Israelis, the Associated Press reports:

Under the draft, the leaders would also step up financial support to Arafat's Palestinian Authority, promising $55 million a month for at least the next 6 months--possibly more if Israeli-Palestinian violence continued.

Reuters reports that Libyan strongman Col. Muammar Gadhafi has his own "peace" proposal, under which Israel would "be replaced by a democracy called 'Isratine' where unarmed Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace." Hey, why not replace Gadhafi's regime with a democracy called "Libertine"?

Incidentally, Gadhafi has got to be one of the world's biggest losers. He's been Libya's dictator since 1969, and he still hasn't been promoted to general.

Yasser, No Sir, Will He Go, Sir?
It's still not clear if Israel will allow Yasser Arafat to go to Beirut for the Arab League summit, which officially begins tomorrow; Ha'aretz reports Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will decide tomorrow morning. If Arafat wants to go, his chances probably weren't enhanced this morning when, as the Jerusalem Post reports, a pair of terrorists from his al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades blew up a car in southern Jerusalem. There were no Israeli casualties.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

They're Just Like the Nazis! Well, OK, Not Really.
Portuguese author Jose Saramago visited Ramallah, a city on the West Bank, yesterday, and proclaimed: "This place is being turned into a concentration camp." Ha'aretz reports:

Saramago said that, before his visit to Ramallah he knew there were Israeli tanks there and that Arafat had been confined to his offices. "I didn't know that two colonies with army posts overlook Ramallah," he said. "I didn't know that every Palestinian settlement is under a separate siege."

The Israeli paper adds: "Asked by Ha'aretz where the gas chambers were, he replied; 'So far, there are none.' " Oh well, uh, never mind.

Saramago won a Nobel Literature Prize in 1998.

Even more hyperbolic is Ahmed Taha Al-Nakr, "an expert in foreign relations in the Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar." He tells the Web site IslamOnline.net that "the Israeli war-machine is eradicating the Palestininan [sic] people merciliessy [sic] in a way that is unprecedented and more barbaric than the Nazi Holocaust."

But if anyone's Nazi-like here, it's the fundamentalist Muslims and militant Arabs. IslamWeb.net features an essay called "Holy War Against the Jews":

It's a holy religious war not for land or sacred places. It is a war between Islam and Judaism, between faith and disbelief. Therefore our martyrs are in paradise and their killed people are in hell. . . .

You can take a look on the daily news to see Muslims are causing fear to the descendants of pigs and monkeys. Muslims will never surrender and Jerusalem will never be the capital of the Jews. And the sect mentioned in the hadith will continue fighting till the end of Jews.

Of course it's not just Jews these people hate. The Toronto Globe and Mail interviews Fatima Halabiyeh, mother of a suicide bomber who murdered 10 Jews in Jerusalem last December. Asked about Sept. 11, she makes clear that her hatred extends not just to Jews but to Americans as well: "Certainly we were all pleased. Not because we wanted those people to suffer, but because we were glad to see America weakened. America is the perpetrator of everything that happens here."

Washington U Backs Down
The law-school dean at Washington University in St. Louis has reversed a faculty decision to deny loan-repayment benefits to graduates who go to work for the military. The faculty had voted to discriminate against aspiring military lawyers because they object to the ban on homosexual servicemen. In a rather long-winded statement, Dean Joel Seligman explains that he decided against the school "treating unequally a category of its own students."

Needless to say, on-campus gay agitators aren't happy. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: "The head of OUTLAW, a student group that supports gay and lesbian rights, said the reversal violates principles he believes the School of Law should defend. T.J. Hill said the decision would open the door for financial assistance for graduates who work for organizations like the Ku Klux Klan." Of course it will do nothing of the sort--but it's telling that Hill equates the military with the Klan.

Has Anyone Seen Michelle Malkin?
In January 2000 columnist Michelle Malkin penned a stirring tribute to people who risk life and limb to become Americans:

Find a small closet. Keep the light turned off. Get inside and close the door. Squat in a corner, hug your knees tightly, and picture yourself stuffed in a cargo container trying to reach America.

Don't move. Let your calves and toes and thigh muscles get numb. Now, picture yourself cramped there in pitch darkness for two weeks, tossed across the Pacific Ocean with a box full of half-starved, seasick stowaways yearning to breathe the red-white-and-blue molecules of political and personal freedom.

This week, the United States repatriated 246 stowaways back to China. . . .

I am lucky and humbled and grateful for every generation of pilgrims that has landed on our shores to make better lives for their children. My own parents emigrated here legally from the Philippines and first settled in Philadelphia, where I was born in 1970. . . . When I imagine the hell-in-a-box journeys of the stowaways who are dying to be Americans, I know there's no place on earth I'd rather be. God bless the U.S.A.

We hope the real Michelle Malkin is reading this, because an impostor just published a hysterical anti-immigrant screed under her name.

Great Moments in Non-Western Civilization
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Nigeria, an Islamic court has sentenced another woman to death by stoning for bearing a child out of wedlock. London's Guardian reports that Amina Lawal Kurami "was found guilty after she was unable to produce four witnesses, as required under Islamic law, to support her claim that she had been 'lured' into having sex with the man involved." In what passes for humanitarianism in the world of radical Islam, "the judge ordered the death sentence to be delayed for eight months to allow Ms Kurami to breastfeed her baby."

The Guardian report also has a fascinating detail about the case of Safiya Huseini, whose death sentence was overturned on procedural grounds earlier this week. Her lawyer, Abdulqadir Imam, told the court that the child's father was actually her former husband, "arguing that in accordance with Islamic teaching pregnancy can last for up to seven years."

Zoned Out
West Virginia University has two "free-speech zones," roughly the size of a classroom. "The zones are actively enforced," The Weekly Standard reports:

In October 1999, a Christian preacher was banished from Gay Pride Week for dissenting outside the zone. In March 2000, College Republicans were kept from passing out flyers in the student union during the school's Festival of Ideas. In November 2001, a student was removed from a Disney recruitment seminar after passing out anti-Disney pamphlets in the lobby beforehand. The university police cited his breach of the free-speech zone as the grounds for their intervention.

Because WVU is a public university, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education rightly argues, this practice is plainly unconstitutional: "The only possible defense of such a restrictive policy is to argue that it is some sort of a 'reasonable time, place and manner' restriction' the foundation writes university president David Hardesty. "We assure you that there is nothing 'reasonable" about transforming ninety-nine percent of your University's property--indeed, public property--into 'Censorship Zones.' The case law never intended to transform public institutions to places where Constitutional protections are the exception rather than the rule."

In other censorship news, Wired reports that "the Cuban government has quietly banned the sale of computers and computer accessories to the public, except in cases where the items are 'indispensable' and the purchase is authorized by the Ministry of Internal Commerce."

Lame Duck Ordered to Quack
It's been a bad month for Rep. Gary Condit. First he lost his seat in the primary. Now he's received a subpoena to testify before a Washington grand jury investigating the disappearance of erstwhile intern and Condit paramour Chandra Levy.

Clinton Carries Reuterville
Reuters refuses to call the Sept. 11 attacks "terrorism" because it wants to treat terrorists evenhandedly. When reporting on American politics, though, the British wire service is happy to take sides. A dispatch on campaign-finance reform includes this passage (emphasis ours):

Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whose investigation of Bill Clinton's sex life resulted in the president's impeachment in 1998, is to lead a legal challenge that will seek to knock down most of the measure as unconstitutional.

Starr, of course, was not investigating Clinton's sex life; he was investigating allegations that Clinton lied under oath and obstructed justice.

Beautiful Loser
CNSNews.com quotes Al Sharpton on the 2004 presidential race:

Sharpton also took a swipe at political analysts who say he "can't win," insisting that his chances are just as good as any other Democrats because "according to the polls, no Democrat can win, so the question is not who can win, but who can best lose."

Eat Your Heart Out, Florida Democrats
On Jan. 6, 2001, less than a month after America's disputed presidential election was finally resolved, the Thai province of Sisaket held an election. A recount was ordered in one locality because of mistakes in the original tally. "The recount was put off for a long time because of personnel changes" at the National Election Commission, its spokesman Piroon Chatravanichkul tells the Associated Press. The recounters still haven't come up with final numbers:

In the meantime, a family of six mice made one box containing about 5,000 ballots home and gnawed several thousand ballots, said Chaipong Markthong, an official witness at the recount. Termites and other pests also caused damage, he said. . . .

Piroon said the election commission was worried both candidates could use the gnawed ballots as a reason to dispute the final recount, in which case, a revote might be called.

And we thought butterflies were bad.

He Must Be Teed Off
Yesterday we noted the case of Peter Longanbach, an ex-prosecutor and "avid golfer" in San Diego who, after pleading guilty to grand theft, was sentenced to "community service"--teaching kids to play golf. It turns out, though, that the Pro Kids Golf Academy didn't want Longanbach. "We don't want any felons dealing with our kids," Ernie Wright, a former Chargers offensive tackle and chairman of the academy, tells the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Jesus Christ, Sports Star
Here's something you don't see every day. CatholicShopper.com offers "inspirational sports statues":

Handpainted resin statues on a solid wood base are the perfect gift for every young Catholic athlete. These statues portray Jesus actively participating with boys and girls in a variety of sports. A wonderful way to reinforce Jesus "as friend" in everyday activities.

One of the statues depicts Jesus playing football, taking a hand-off from a little boy as another boy tries to tackle the Son of God. Jesus is portrayed playing 12 sports in all, including baseball, golf, skiing and ballet. But the sweet science gets short shrift; there's no statue of Jesus as a boxer.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Vincent Freeh, Fred Furia, Janice Lyons, C.E. Dobkin, Michael Segal, Yehuda Hilewitz, Diane Ravitch, Roger McKinney, Aaron Gross, Anthony Brunsvold, Terry Harris, Edward Lanza, Rob Harvie, Robert Owen, Marie Bourgeois, Robert Sinnema, Jim Wirtz, Walter Smith, Tom Crittenden, James Varney, Steve Baus, Kate Nelson and Troy Taylor. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Also on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: On the anthrax trail (link requires registration).
• Tom Bray: The scandal of college sports.
• Tunku Varadarajan: By dwelling on skin color, the Oscars do blacks a disservice.