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In the years since the Second Vatican Council, the various traditions of Christian faith have participated in an ecumenical gift exchange for their mutual enrichment. Catholics have embraced Protestant strong points like singing the faith and closer familiarity with the Word of God. Protestants have increased their celebrations of the Eucharist and rediscovered helpful practices like spiritual direction.

My mother and I had just settled in front of the television to watch a movie. Foolishly (at least it seems so, afterwards, to my teenage self), I mentioned that the movie had been condemned by the Legion of Decency. I promptly found myself looking for something else to do. There wouldn’t be any TV for me that night.

The bellwether of the Canadian consensus, The National with Peter Mansbridge, recently played up the story of the Vatican allegedly proclaiming a new list of deadly sins. The implication was that the old seven — pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth — just didn’t cut it today, so Rome had invented new sins to lay upon gullible believers.

Numbers are flawed

I would like to comment on Jack Granatstein’s statement that over 70 per cent of Afghans  also want NATO troops to be there, to protect them from bad guys (“Bishops on Afghanistan are either wise or naive,” March 9).

The Environics poll, conducted by D3 Systems in Afghanistan, is being touted as groundbreaking research into the views of the Afghan people about NATO occupation. The reality is that there are as many questions as answers arising from the poll results.

This poll is not the first of its kind to be done in Afghanistan, but the results are striking because they contradict dozens of comprehensive studies conducted by other agencies. For example 73 per cent of respondents in the D3 Systems study said that women’s rights were improving in Afghanistan. This contradicts the NGO Womenkind Worldwide which found that attacks against women have actually been on the rise since 2001 and that there had been no improvement in the lives of Afghan women as a whole.

The statement that 70 per cent want NATO to be there contradicts countless documents from groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which cite the army and Afghan National Police as a chief source of violence. The numbers from D3 Systems either represent an astounding turnaround in public opinion or there was some type of flaw in the research.

These strange results aren’t surprising given the history of the D3 Systems polling firm. The group, whose former clients include Rand Corporation (a virtual who’s who of the military industrial complex), is notorious for providing the results that are needed to advance a political agenda.

Tellingly, D3 Systems is the only polling firm in the world that was able to consistently show that a majority of Iraqis felt their lives have improved since the  invasion of 2003. In 2004 and 2005, D3 conducted polls for media outlets based in the United States and found more than 50 per cent of Iraqis were excited about their future.

There are still many other unanswered questions about this survey. For example, did security or military contingents escort the survey teams around the country? If so the results would be terribly skewed, as these types of escort would destroy the impartiality of the surveyors.

The survey Granatstein refers to, I believe, came out at a very fortuitous time for the government, days after a throne speech advocating the extension of Canada’s war in Afghanistan.

Ron MacDougall
Sydney, N.S.