In Hungary, Bush Salutes Anti-Soviet Revolt of ’56 By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post Staff Writer

The president sought to draw parallels between Hungary’s transition from dictatorship to democracy and the U.S. enterprise in Iraq, where the administration is struggling to help launch a democratically elected government. …

Aniko Kellner, a 34-year-old graduate student at Central European University, noted how the Western powers failed to come to the aid of Hungary when the popular rebellion was crushed by the Soviet Union. At the time, the United States was preoccupied with the Suez crisis and had no interest in pressing for a confrontation with Moscow.

For Bush to praise a revolt that the United States did not support “is a very tricky thing,” Kellner observed. “For Hungarians, it could be seen as unintentional cynicism.” …

“There is a contradiction here,” said Tibor Varady, a Budapest lawyer who helped organize protests Thursday while Bush was speaking. “The revolution in 1956 ended with occupation by the Soviets. The problem is today George Bush stands for occupation. He has not represented freedom.”
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World War II and Iraq: Polls Apart? By Al Kamen

White House press secretary Tony Snow , on CNN’s “Late Edition” on Sunday, said: “The president understands peoples’ impatience — not impatience, but how a war can wear on a nation. He understands that. If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, ‘Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?’ But you cannot conduct a war based on polls.”

In fact, there was a poll taken by Gallup from Dec. 31, 1944, to Jan. 4, 1945 — three years into that war and right in the middle of the bloody Battle of the Bulge, where U.S. casualties were estimated between 70,000 and 80,000. It found that 73 percent of Americans would refuse to make peace with Adolf Hitler if he offered it and that 86 percent of Americans thought there was no chance that we would lose the war in Europe.