Apparently, that public opinion survey done in the Islamic world was dramatically misreported.

These eye-opening results were "actually the average for the countries surveyed regardless of the size of their populations," the NCPP noted. "Kuwait, with less than 2 million Muslims, was treated the same as Indonesia, which has over 200 million Muslims."

That's Enron arithmetic. It's as if California and South Dakota each were granted the same number of electoral votes in presidential elections.

Also, apparently the Kuwait numbers weren't of Kuwaiti citizens:

One other problem: not everyone interviewed for the poll was Muslim. "The surveys were samples of all residents of the countries surveyed, not only Muslims," the NCPP statement read. (In hindsight, this probably was a minor problem: fewer than 500 of the 9,924 respondents were non-Muslim, according to Gallup.)

In fact, you didn't need to be a citizen of the country where the interviews were conducted. For example, fewer than half of the individuals in the Kuwait sample were Kuwaiti citizens.

So who were they? Saudis? Palestinians?

While the correct numbers still give a grim picture of Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. (much of which is fomented by a government-controlled press), it doesn't speak well for this much-vaunted polling organization.

Well, I seem to remember the Gallop folks releasing statements almost immediately relating how difficult it is in these countries to get accurate polling data (and reminding people to take the results with a grain of salt). Sure, they were hedging their bets, but I don't think this speaks too ill of them. Would Marc Herold, for instance, offer such disclaimers?