Horn starts out on the wrong foot by stating:
Not only does this poll seem to contradict the last, but the numbers even within the Pew poll look extraordinarily contradictory.
I'm looking at the two poll responses: one is stating that a majority of Pakistanis view America as the greatest threat to the country, the other is expressing widespread concern that the Taliban could take over. Those may seem to overlap a bit, but they certainly don't contradict each other. Any person with a basic ability to understand political polling in the United States (and sadly most journalists seem to lack that ability) would be able to tell you how slightly different wording on a a similar question can yield very different results - these two questions are actually asking entirely different things.
I can see it as perfectly reasonable that a Pakistani may hold pretty unfavorable views about the Taliban for any number of reasons, but still view another country firing missiles inside its borders a threat. This inability to look past an American bias and assume that not trusting the Taliban should equal admiration for the US seems silly.
Even the headline: Pakistani Public Opinion: Less Extreme Than Previously Thought?, is pretty sloppy. Why should we consider a dislike of America an extreme position, at least if it's in a foreign country?
Horn follows up with a nice round up of analysis, but then sadly, ends with this
Pakistanis Oppose Taliban, Still Revile US, rang The Associated Press' headline. Yet another way to spin the data.
Hmm... for once a headline writer at the AP manages to correctly identify the story without complety distorting the data, and this is what gets labeled as spin?
