On the August 20 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson discussed an August 19 New York Times op-ed written by seven members of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division -- which asserted that "[t]he claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework." Carlson, who admitted to being “a little bit uncomfortable” with the servicemen's decision to write the op-ed, stated: “I wonder if weighing in on a political question such as this doesn't squander the awesome moral authority that these guys already have.” However, Carlson did not mention that the op-ed responded to assessments made in a previous New York Times op-ed, “A War We Just Might Win,” by Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. Carlson, who hosted Pollack on the July 30 edition of Tucker, did not challenge his opinions on whether progress is being made in Iraq, in contrast to his treatment of the servicemen's op-ed.

Later on the August 20 program, Carlson said: “I instinctively distrust sentences like this”: “A vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force.” He added: “These guys may be fighting the war, but they don't have access to the opinions of the vast majority of anybody in Iraq.” Retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC military analyst, agreed: “Well, that's absolutely correct. They're looking at the world through a straw. They see only what they've seen.” But when Carlson interviewed Pollack, who wrote in the op-ed that he and O'Hanlon had just returned from Iraq, where they “spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel,” Carlson did not ask him whether he had been able to choose the sites he had visited or the people he had spoken with while there. During a July 30 CNN interview, Pollack said that his trip “was largely organized by the military.”

As Media Matters for America noted, in the August 19 op-ed, without explicitly referring to O'Hanlon and Pollack's op-ed, the seven authors from the 82nd Airborne used language echoing the earlier op-ed and challenged its major claims.

During the July 30 edition of the show, Carlson said to Pollack: "[E]verybody knows that Iraq is a disaster, I think, and it's the Bush administration's fault," adding, “But what people, I don't think, have any understanding of is progress at all.” He then asked Pollack: “What progress did you see there?” Later, Carlson asserted: “It seems to me, if you're a member of Congress and you're debating whether or not to pull out, or as the situation is now, when to pull out, how quickly to pull out, you ought to be aware of the situation on the ground.” Carlson also stated, “I actually decided the war was a disaster by going to Iraq,” and said to Pollack: “Speaking of -- I found the place really threatening. Did you feel less threatened than you did when you were there last?”

From the July 30 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:

CARLSON: Ken, thanks for coming on.

POLLACK: My pleasure, Tucker. Good to be here.

CARLSON: So, it's not -- I mean, everybody knows that Iraq is a disaster, I think, and it's the Bush administration's fault -- and you say that in the piece. But what people, I don't think, have any understanding of is progress at all. What progress did you see there?

POLLACK: Well, we saw progress in a number of different areas. Most important of all, we saw it in the security sector. U.S. forces had changed their tactics, they changed their strategy, and they really were actually having progress or having an impact on the Iraqis, creating some degree of security for them, repairing basic services, allowing them to live normal lives.

[...]

CARLSON: Here's the first line of the piece, for those who missed it. “Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has, over four years, lost essentially all credibility. Yet now, the administration's critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place in Iraq.”

It seems to me, if you're a member of Congress and you're debating whether or not to pull out, or as the situation is now, when to pull out, how quickly to pull out, you ought to be aware of the situation on the ground, and yet you say they're not. Why?

POLLACK: Well, again, Iraq is an incredibly complicated place, Tucker. And a lot of the changes that we saw, the developments that we saw, are very, very recent.

[...]

POLLACK: The place has gone from being the worst part of Iraq to, outside of Kurdistan, the best. The Sunni sheikhs, the Sunni tribes, have basically decided they don't want any more part of Al Qaeda and the other Salafi jihadist groups, and they've come to the United States and said, “We want your help getting rid of them.” And they have taken on that challenge and done it to a very significant extent, and that's a very recent development.

I sometimes feel like our news cycle, and particularly our political cycle, takes weeks, if not months, to catch up with what's going on --

CARLSON: Well, that's right.

POLLACK: -- in a place that's changing as fast as Iraq.

CARLSON: That is exactly right. I actually decided the war was a disaster by going to Iraq, and at the time, Hillary Clinton was out there saying that all was well. Speaking of -- I found the place really threatening. Did you feel less threatened than you did when you were there last?

POLLACK: In some places, yes; in other places, no.

Additionally, as the blog Think Progress noted in response to Carlson's assertion that he “instinctively distrust[s] sentences” like “A vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force,” polling supports the statement in the servicemen's op-ed. Specifically, a February 25-March 5 poll by ABC News, USA Today, the BBC, and ARD German TV found that, in a sample of more than 2,000 people across all 18 provinces of Iraq, 69 percent thought “the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is making security in our country ... worse.” The same poll found that 77 percent of those polled thought the United States “is playing a ... negative role in Iraq right now.”

Polling from 2004 assessing Iraqi attitudes toward the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has found similar results. An April 2004 USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey assessing nearly 3,500 Iraqis of every religious and ethnic group found that, when "[a]sked whether they view[ed] the U.S.-led coalition as 'liberators' or 'occupiers,' 71% of all respondents said 'occupiers.' " Further, in a May 20, 2004, article, Reuters reported on a poll from the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, which found that, based on a sample of 1,600 Iraqis, “nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see U.S. forces as occupiers rather than liberators or peacekeepers.”

From the August 20 edition of MSNBC's Tucker:

CARLSON: A group of U.S. soldiers is weighing in on the politics of Iraq, but these are not retired generals -- not the ones you see on television -- these are active members of the 82nd Airborne Division, fresh from a tour of duty in Iraq.

They wrote an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times and disputed talk that the U.S. is getting that country under control. The group pointed to the fragile alliances American forces have had to form to quell violence there, and an Iraqi army in which thousands are loyal only to their militias. Caught in the crossfire, they say, are the Iraqi people, citizens fearful of the terrorists and insurgents and growing wary of a continued American presence there.

What should we make of an assessment from enlisted servicemen? Well, let's ask MSNBC military analyst retired U.S. Army Colonel Jack Jacobs. Jack, thanks for coming on.

JACOBS: Good evening.

CARLSON: So, what do you make of this?

JACOBS: Well, it's unusual, to say the least.

CARLSON: Yes.

JACOBS: I can't remember a single time when this sort of thing has happened. We've heard a lot, as you suggested, from retired generals and little midget retired colonels like me from time to time castigating the administration and the chain of command for doing what we think shouldn't be done and not doing what they should be done. This is the first time we've heard from serving enlisted men on this subject and, in my experience, I think it's unique.

CARLSON: Well, it just seems to me that -- I'm a little -- I mean, let me just speak for myself. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with it for two reasons. One, there has traditionally been, as you've alluded to, the separation between, you know, active duty military and politics in that the, you know, service members kind of act out the policies of the U.S. government, right or wrong, but they don't comment upon them because you want civilian control of the military and that has always been our tradition. And two, I wonder if weighing in on a political question such as this doesn't squander the awesome moral authority that these guys already have.

JACOBS: I think there is some detriment to the moral authority you're talking about. I think these soldiers think that they were doing a -- performing a public service by making the public aware of what is -- they see as happening at the lowest possible levels, because, of course, we only see a broad brush of the strategy. We don't see very much of what happens tactically.

[...]

CARLSON: Yes. See, I'm not sure what to think. Like most Americans, I instinctively respect people who are currently serving, who are, you know, in a war zone -- absolutely.

And I'm not sure whether the surge is working or not. I honestly don't know and I'm not taking a position on that 'cause I don't have the information, but I do know I instinctively distrust sentences like this. And this is from the op-ed from these seven members of the 82nd Airborne, quote: “A vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force.”

Now, when every -- the president uses phrases like that: “The vast majority of Iraqis” want this or don't want that. My first thought is, well, how the hell does he know? And that's my first thought here. These guys may be fighting the war, but they don't have access to the opinions of the vast majority of anybody in Iraq.

JACOBS: Well, that's absolutely correct. They're looking at the world through a straw. They see only what they've seen. They may have been in an area where in fact the surge is not working, or there isn't a surge, or their tactics are not working. There's a lot of fighting among Shia, for example, or between Shia and Sunni that's not controlled by the American military, where the Iraqi army perhaps is not up to snuff. We do know that there are areas in which the surge is working, where our strategies are working, and we hear about that all the time.

We do hear reports, obviously, of places where things are not working well, and that's particularly in areas inside Baghdad. But you raise a significant question: To what extent are we supposed to listen to, or believe, anybody's estimate of what's going on in an environment where almost nobody knows what he's doing or what's going on?

CARLSON: Right.

JACOBS: We do have to take everybody's comments with a grain of salt -- these included.