Raq haa not yet embraced the modern cult of the opinion poll. Voter research is unheard of, market research is rare, and surveys of national attitudes tend to be unscientific and unreliable. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party operatives can't tell you his favorability rating among 18-to-3o-year-olds in Diyala province, consumer-product companies don't know what percentage of Baghdad households own a washing machine, and newspapers can only guess whether drivers in Mosul are more or less dissatisfied with the state of their roads than those in Najaf. And so, although we know for certain that the majority of Americans think the 2003 invasion of Iraq 10 years ago this month was a tragic mistake, there's no reliable way of telling what proportion of Iraqis feel the same way.
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