Pollster John Zogby claims that 72 percent of our soldiers in Iraq want the U.S. to withdraw by the end of the year.

Pollster John Zogby claims that 72 percent of our soldiers in Iraq want the U.S. to withdraw by the end of the year. The same survey reports that 42 percent of the troops do not understand the U.S. mission there, and 85 percent think we went to war because Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Once Zogby started disclosing details about the poll's sponsors and methods, however, bloggers from both ends of the political spectrum started advising readers to view the results with a skeptical eye. A wealthy war opponent, whom Zogby will not name, funded the poll, which should at least make us wonder about the fact that the poll's results serve the purposes of its sponsor. Second, the poll questions--which were obtained by conservative bloggers Hugh Hewitt and Duane Patterson--were confusing and manipulative, and seem to have been contrived to elicit the desired answers. The liberal blogger and polling expert Mystery Pollster spoke with Zogby off the record about his methods and reported that "big 'grains of salt' are certainly in order" when imbibing the poll's claims. Given the circumstances, we would say that's putting it mildly.