Americans Respect the Troops

...more than the press or politicians. Thanks to Strategypage;



An annual Gallup poll last month showed that the American
military was the most respected institution in the country. However,
the approval rating for the military has fluctuated since September 11,
2001.

Americans Who Respected the Military a Lot

2001 66 percent
2002 79
2003 82
2004 75
2005 74
2006 73

By comparison, at the bottom of the list we have HMOs, Congress and big
business with 15-20 percent. Journalists did a little better, but not
much. Just behind the military were police, with 58 percent, and
churches with 52 percent. In a separate poll, about who would be more likely
to tell the truth, about 60 percent more people would pick military
officers over journalists (who, in turn, were considered more trustworthy
than members of Congress and lawyers).

It's not surprising that respect and confidence in the troops went up
after 911, or that it peaked in 2003, after a month of reports from
journalists embedded with the troops. No surprise, either, that the numbers
declined after that, as the media turned against the Iraq operation
and, eventually, the troops themselves. What kept the military poll
numbers up was the increasing amount of reporting by the troops themselves.
Blogs, email and occasional appearances on television kept reminding
people that the people in uniform were not quite the out-of-control thugs
the media was increasingly portraying them as.