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WorldPublicOpinion.org/PIPA reserach has been used in the policymaking process in several instances. Below are a few noteable examples:
Senate Debate
In a Senate debate on Iraq in June, 2006, both Senators Biden and Kerry cited WPO findings specifically. The parts of both Senators speeches mentioning the findings were played on “Morning Edition” on NPR the day after the debate.
Iraq Study Group
The Iraq Study Group Report, also known as the Baker – Hamilton Report, released in December 2006, dedicated a full paragraph (p. 35) to discussing the findings from WPO’s September poll of the Iraqi public in the context of understanding the current situation in Iraq.
Questioning of Brent Scowcroft by Senator Hagel
The role of WPO poll findings continued in the policy discourse on February 1, 2007 in hearings held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of the discussion prior to the vote on resolutions about the Administration’s new Iraq policy. Former National Security Advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski provided testimony. During questioning of General Scowcroft, Senator Charles Hagel cited WPO poll findings of Iraqi views towards the U.S. military presence to challenge policy directions.
This question and answer was captured in a segment on the Lehrer NewsHour on PBS that evening:
“BRENT SCOWCROFT: When you're training your child with training wheels on the bicycle, how do you know when to take the training wheels off? I don't know.
SEN. CHUCK HAGEL (R), Nebraska: Well, again, I wouldn't use that analogy, either. And when you've got 70 percent or more of the Iraqi people who don't want us there, and over 60 percent say it's OK to kill Americans, and we're going to put a number of new troops in Baghdad, which you have just noted that you don't, I guess to some extent, agree with -- you've noted that sectarian --those are sectarian issues -- so then isn't there some jumble in all this?
BRENT SCOWCROFT: It would be nice to be precise and to have all these benchmarks that everybody can see and so on. This is not that kind of a problem. We're in a mess, and we've got to work our way out of it.”
Debate in the House of Representatives
During the funding debate for the Iraq war on March 16, 2006, Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced an amendment, which was approved by the House, to prohibit the use of funds for permanent military bases in Iraq:
"Mr. Chairman, this very point is supported by a poll conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) earlier this year. PIPA found that 76 percent of Iraqi's believe that US will maintain bases in Iraq permanently, even if the newly elected government asks the US to leave Iraq.
"Congress needs to be on record. We must not have permanent military bases in Iraq."