Depending on how you ask the question, public support for the U.S. role in the bombing campaign in Libya is either unusually tepid or extremely robust. Gallup pegs it at just 47 percent — well below the levels the pollster measured in the opening weeks of the 2003 Iraq (72 percent) and 2001 Afghanistan (82 percent) conflicts. At the same time Gallup’s Libya bombing survey was taken, pollsters for CBS News registered a 68 percent approval rating. The likely cause of the discrepancy is that CBS included the same misleading description that President Obama offered at the campaign’s outset. The Obama description suggested that the real goal was “to protect civilians from attacks by Gadhafi forces.” Those words notwithstanding, our targets in Libya — and other comments by Obama — suggest that the real goal is getting rid of Moammar Gadhafi, aka “regime change.” The discrepancy in measures of public support illustrates how politicians sell wars. Recall the famous “sixteen words” about alleged weapons of mass destruction that Obama’s predecessor used to win support for the Iraq War. Americans were told Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons and was thus a direct threat to this nation and our allies. President George W. Bush sold the war with the most publicly palatable rationale, disregarding the issue of the reliability of the intelligence involved. The WMD rationale was gradually de-emphasized and ultimately abandoned.