More seriously...
On May 12, 2005, at 11:26 AM, Gary Denton wrote:
"If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major
deterioration of the situation," said the newly-appointed minister, pointing
out that 75 percent of households had clean water two decades ago.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=13481
This isn't particularly useful, unfortunately. The logical conclusion is that Iraqis, naturally, were miserable after 1.5 decades of Hussein, sanctions and so on; and only a few years of change won't have addressed the slow decline their country was led into by Saddam. As an indictment of Hussein the survey might be effective; but it could also be used as a chastisement against the US and UN and the years of sanctions, no-fly, etc.
A more useful survey (more relevant to this discussion, that is) would be to compare living conditions in 2000 to those found in 2005. But that might not be possible.
The problem I see is that you'd actually have had to take the first part of the survey in 2000. Anyone you asked today about how life was in 2000 will be doubly biased -- memory, which is not a particularly reliable tool, will contain its own slants; and whatever opinion is voiced today is going to be colored at least in part by current events as well as the last half decade of history.
If you were to ask me how I liked Iraq now, and I was living there and a US soldier had accidentally shot my brother, I would probably have a very negative outlook, even if (in 1999) Hussein's goons had once threatened to shoot me if I didn't stop printing subversive pamphlets (or whatever).
Sure, those days were hard, I'd probably think ... but at least my brother was still alive. You knew what the rules were and you knew what lines not to cross. Now, with those hair-trigger troops everywhere, even getting some bread and goat's cheese is a life-risking venture.
But if you were to ask me, in 1999, how I liked Iraq, I might spit and say, "The sooner that son of a jackal Hussein is out of power, the better."
Population surveys aren't necessarily objective. (Opinion surveys are NEVER objective.) That's a problem. The other problem is (I think) that when you ask a given person his opinion, he's likely to tell you what he thinks at that moment, not what his overall sense of a thing is. In that respect you might only be getting something like a daily temperature reading, not any useful measure of a climatic trend. So you need a longitudinal study as well.
This suggests to me that such polls can't necessarily be used to reach firm conclusions, especially if they're taken after the fact and given to people conscious of many competing political agendas, conscious that how they answer might well have a lasting impact on the quality of their lives in the foreseeable future.
The one objective thing I can think of that might be used to argue life in Iraq has improved is the elections and their (still developing) results. As measures go that's not necessarily a bad one, but I think I've done a fairly thorough job of expressing that, in my view, the ends do not justify the means, as well as why I have that view.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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