Josh Marshall Completely Debunks Tony Snow’s False Claim About Poll Data And The Battle Of The

A couple days ago, Josh Marshall called attention to "Tony Snow's witless comparison of 'staying the course' in Iraq to WWII's Battle of the Bulge." Here's Snow's quote: "The president understands people's impatience — not impatience but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?' But you cannot conduct a war based on polls." Josh recalled the history, and exposed the underlying dishonesty of Snow's comparison of a single difficult battle in a winning war versus a whole war in which everything keeps going wrong. But Josh also claimed "the US government kept very detailed tabs on public opinion and war morale through the war. So I suspect something at least analogous to Snow's hypothetical poll was done. And I'm confident that it showed very few if anyone saying anything like that." Today Josh reports on the "secret polling for FDR throughout the war on public support for the war, and specifically focused on trendlines, noting shifts from event to event." And he shows a chart whereon the Battle of the Bulge is a specifically identified event, and the data shows public support rising.