ABC Poll: Most in Afghanistan say life is better now than under Taliban

[Barrett808]

GENERAL

-- Three-fourths say living conditions, security from crime and freedom of expression have improved from days under Taliban.

-- Almost nine in 10 say the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban a good thing for the people of Afghanistan.

-- And three-fourths of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction.

ECONOMY

-- People evenly divided on whether economic opportunities are better or worse now than under Taliban.

-- By a 2-1 margin people say that their own economic situation is bad.

...

-- Conducted by Charney Research with field work by the Afghan Center for Social and Opinion Research in Kabul.

(more)

http://www.wpmi.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=5DC83C47-8657-45BB-BD08-A647B34B73E2

[WI_DEM]

1. I had no problem with the US going into Afghanistan

and pursuing Bin-Laden and the Taliban. The question dems should ask over and over again is "where is Bin-Laden?" you got Saddam but he had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMD.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

22. Except for one glaring problem....

...the people of Afghanistan were never our enemy, but they suffered a great deal while we bombed their entire country to destroy what we were told was the Al Qaeda training complex.

In fact, the great majority of the aleged hijackers were Saudi....none were from Afghanistan or Iraq.

[leesa]

32. You should have a problem with it. There was NEVER an investigation into

who did 9-11. We have NO IDEA who did 9-11. We only know who the White House, proven liars, want us to BELIEVE did 9-11. Did you know they met with the Taliban in June of 2001 and promised them a carpet of gold if they accepted the proposal for the trans-Afghan pipeline and a carpet of bombs if they did not accept it? Did you know this was key to the vast fortune of the Asian energy market? Did you know that if they did not accept the deal the bombs were slated to fall in October 2001 ("when the snow falls"),. Did you know the Taliban refused the financial deal? Did you know the bombs fell ON SCHEDULE? Do you remember the Bush team pretended they war plans just happened to be sitting on the shelf?

Did you know BOTH Cheney and Bush personally directed Daschle NOT to investigate 9-11?

9-11 was a scam and the invasion of Afghanistan was as much a scam as the invasion of Iraq.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

36. Ooh!

I love the smell of bullshit in the morning.

[IA_Seth]

44. Got any credible links to all that?

Because without some credible proof, I believe that pile about as much as I believe the pile that lives in the White House.

[Mr Rabble]

47. Try Google dude. The above is all true.

I dont mean to be rude, but everything he said is common knowledge.

[madmark]

42. This is my view as well; and the exact reason the Iraq adventure

is such bullshit.

[Straight Shooter]

2. So the attacks on our Towers were a good thing for Afghanistan, eh?

How bizarre.

[pocket]

11. they'll be great once that pipeline goes in

.

[Straight Shooter]

13. Exactly what I was thinking. n/t

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

37. There will be no pipeline.

Simply put, there are many alternative routes to Afghanistan, all of them with a better geographical and political situation than Afghanistan. The pipeline is pretty much a myth, as far as I can tell.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

40. It wasn't a "myth" as late as August 2001 when the NeoCon Junta.......

...was still in negotiations with the Taliban about building that pipeline. And it sure wasn't a "myth" when the Taliban reps were meeting in Houston prior to 2001 to discuss that very same pipeline.

The Enron Pipeline Connection To 9/11
<http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0206/S00030.htm>

The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?
<http://www.alternet.org/story/12525/>

The Puzzle of the Enron Coverups
<http://www.albionmonitor.com/0202a/enroncoverup.html>

[Dead_Parrot]

3. What about outside of Kabul?

Just wondering...

[Ignacio Upton]

4. I'm glad there is social progress, but economic is needed:

"People evenly divided on whether economic opportunities are better or worse now than under Taliban.

-- By a 2-1 margin people say that their own economic situation is bad."

The rebuilding effort in Afghanistan is at token proportions relative to Iraq, and troop presence has also been weak (I remember back in December 2001 Rumsfeld refused to let U.N. peacekeepers in Afghanistan beyond a few isolated regions that included Kabul. Also, why did Bush CUT money for Afghanistan and reappropriate it for Iraq?)

[phantom power]

5. Is there any special reason to trust this poll?

I don't want to be skeptical for no reason, but our fearless leaders have already demonstrated that they're happy to plant propaganda, with the intent of having it leak back here to the U.S. press.

[Barrett808]

8. We could Google Charney Research...

...and the Afghan Center for Social and Opinion Research in Kabul.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

23. None. Check out Charney Research's website, and click on....

...our clients at the top of the page.

It's a very interesting client list, IMHO...includes CFR, USAID, and The World Bank.

<http://www.charneyresearch.com/>

[maxsolomon]

6. that was our democracy laboratory, right there

we were already in. they aren't arabs, so they didn't hate us quite as much.

we could have given clean water & power to every village in the place, and sewage treatment to the cities.

think they'd hate us after that? think we'd have scored any points with muslims in general?

but, gotta get that oil!

[bklyncowgirl]

34. Yup, if we'd done Afganistan right it could have been our model state.

The one that the neocons believe would destabilize dictatorships throughout the Middle East by its shining example.

Oh well, better luck next time.

[maxsolomon]

46. the tragedy is that there is no next time

i find it impossible to be TOO cynical about this country. its 100% fucked in the head.

[bklyncowgirl]

48. You're right. Our credibility is shot to hell. nt

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Wonder what they would say if they compared their lives between

the days when they had a king and the Taliban.

[enid602]

9. opium

Sure; the opium trade's back up.

[Kagemusha]

10. Most Iraqis had it better under Saddam than them under the Taliban

That's my theory.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

24. That's what we were told, isn't it? But, we've been told a lot....

....of things by the NeoCon Junta, haven't we?

[Zynx]

26. I've never heard ANYONE from even fringe groups try to say that life

under the Taliban was good.

[eridani]

35. No, but life under the warlords they replaced was far worse

And the fucking bombing campaign was a major war crime. It was opposed by all 1000 of the anti-Taliban leaders at their Peshawar meeting in October 2002. They favored bribing the non-hardcore types out of their allegiance to the Taliban, but our Sociopath in Chief and pals were not going to have any part of a solution that didn't involve cramming US preferences down their throats.

They also wanted the former King as their leader, but the US forced the warlords and Karzai on them.

[Zynx]

38. EDIT: Never mind.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

39. That didn't seem to bother the NeoCon Junta when they were....

...negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan as late as August 2001.

[Zynx]

49. How exactly is that relevant to what I said?

Of course right-wingers have no problem dealing with authoritarian regimes. They did it in Latin America for decades.

[Karenina]

12. Bullshit disinformation.

:puke:

[chknltl]

14. agreed nt

[Benhurst]

16. I'll second that. NT

[brentspeak]

20. Why is it "disinformation"?

On what grounds?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

25. See my Post #23.

[Judi Lynn]

27. Thanks for posting the link. You bet it's interesting. n/t

[NuttyFluffers]

29. Very interesting! A(bsolute) B(ull) C(rap) and Disney would never lie, no?

nor would they get fixed information from a psy ops propaganda source now? and the world bank is as trustable as... our government! :7
critical thinking = bad. blind obedience = good. :evilgrin:

[enigma000]

30. Invade under false pretences

Murder, a goodly portion of the population

And everything is fine right?

Afghanistan: the silent genocide.

[VegasWolf]

15. Did they poll anyone even 3 KM outside Kabul? nt

:sarcasm:

[liberalpragmatist]

17. Good if true

I don't understand the poo-poohing of this. Admittedly, it might be false and it has to be taken with a grain of salt, given that it's doubtful polling was very extensive.

But is it really that hard to imagine that even outside Kabul Afghans are happier than under the Taliban? Frankly, I'd rather live under a brutal warlord who's not a religious-nutcase than living under the Taliban.

And I fully supported going into Afghanistan. I still do. We should have finished the job, stabiized the country, and caught Bin Laden. NOT gone into Iraq.

[Chicago Democrat]

18. Opium production way up, what's not to love?

Girls sold for insecticide, hey life is good!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. What a major pants-load.

[Orsino]

21. Thank goodness there's a silver lining.

Wonder what Americans would say if asked a similar question concerning * and Clinton?

[MODemocrat]

28. Sounds like some more of that hogwash to me

N/T

[chknltl]

31. Hmmm...Just what do the enlightened minds think???? Link:

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/DU/ICTforAatT.html
I suppose freepers will claim this is all liberal propaganda....

[BenDavid]

33. Help me L-rd

You could see all this good news coming right here before the Holidays. Every thing is great in Afghanistan and Iraq. You can bet yo butt that next week when NBC, ABC, CNN, all give their new poll numbers you will see Bush anywhere from 40 to 43%. All will say bush is rebounding and it will be kiss ass BIG TIME........... A lil note here. have you ever watched the polls, and see who is first but rather who is last, and then the one that was last, will a majority of the time be the first next time. Example: 3 polls back Faux had Bush still in the 40's when all the otherr polls had bush in the mid 30's to high 30's. Faux's next to last poll finally had him in the mid 30's. Now this poll which Faux was the first to come out this week had bush 42%. CBS followed with their poll at 40...You can foresee all the other polls giving bush an uptick in his poll numbers ranging from 40 to 44..... WATCH AND SEE, and watch all the gleeful looking faces cause it's christmas bonus time again and hey, they got to kiss bush's ass.....

[plasticsundance]

41. 9 in 10, huh?

Sort of like the old leaders in the Soviet Union winning by 90 plus percent. Absolute bullshit. Wake-up! You're being lied to. Everyday you're being lied to by the powers-that-be. I wonder what a human rights group would discover with a poll ... or simple observation.

This is an article that came out just today:

Four years after the ouster of the Taliban, as another frigid winter begins, most residents of the Afghan capital are without power, except for five hours every second or third night. Although hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid have been spent to fix the problem, conditions have worsened in the past year as improvements have lagged and the population surges. Government officials say things will not noticeably improve until at least 2008, when new power lines are to be completed.

The gulf between the wealthy few and the literally powerless majority is especially striking now, as pockets of opulence sprout across the impoverished capital of 4 million after a quarter-century of war that left much of the city in ruins. Downtown, there is a glittering new shopping mall as well as a five-star hotel where regular rooms go for $250 a night and the Presidential Suite fetches $1,200.

There is also Sherpur, a central neighborhood that once contained an army barracks surrounded by poor squatters' huts. Two years ago, it was taken over by government officials. The huts were razed and the land parceled out to people with money and connections. Now, dozens of mansions are being built there.

In Kabul, a Stark Gulf Between Wealthy Few and the Poor

I bet those rich people in Afghanistan were the ones polled. Huh? Even money?

Mohammed Agha, a father of five who works as a bicycle mechanic, said he was afraid not everyone in the community would survive the winter. In the past few months, two children have died. "All of the children are suffering. They are all coughing from pneumonia," said Agha, his own voice hoarse with the disease.

[VegasWolf]

43. Afganistan to World: We soooo luv the Unites States! We thank them every

day for bringing peace to the middle east! What we poor sheep herders have done without the US?

:sarcasm:

[Exiled in America]

45. If true, then good. I'm glad life is better for them.