On his blog at the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams does a wonderful job of debunking a poll that the New York Times covered unskeptically the other day in an article by Rick Gladstone headlined "Majority of Americans Favor Trade With Cuba, Poll Finds."
The Times article described the organization that commissioned the poll, the Atlantic Council, as "a prominent Washington research organization." Mr. Abrams provides some information the Times did not: "the Atlantic Council has a strong position against the embargo on Cuba." Neither article discloses that the Atlantic Council is partially funded by foreign governments that include Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, information that came out during the process of confirming Secretary of Defense Hagel.