The Washington Times, [1] this morning:
Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable “emboldenment effect” on insurgents there.
Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university’s Kennedy School of Government.
The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled “Is There an ‘Emboldenment’ Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq.” [2]
This isn’t rocket science, here, gang. Which party controls the press, again? And which party stands to gain power by means of our enemy being bolder, instead of defeated?
By the way, in case you’re interested in the facts of the thing, the paper is available, free [2], (in PDF format).
(I note a number of people charging for it…. while the authors are not charging for it. Welcome to Net 2.0.)