Thoughts on the way home from the pub

[ewx]

...it seems that since the war started, support for it in this country has risen above 50%. It seems reasonable to ask, or at least, speculate as to why, though the Economist does an unusually poor job of doing so. I can think of a few possibilities:

• Additional information coming to light since the invasion. If so I must have missed it; granted there've been some pretty gruesome reports coming out of the occupied areas concerning torture cells and so on, but I can't believe that enough people had missed previous descriptions of what was going on in Iraq to be so thoroughly swayed in their opinion by that. (Reminds me of a lot of the pre-war debate on Usenet etc; almost none of it, on either side, seemed likely to sway anyone...)
• The "support the troops" effect. Should require no explanation.
• Some kind of concept of collective acceptance of national decisions: argue against a decision you disagree with until it's made, but thereafter regard it as the will of the country and move onto the next thing. People do this all the time on a smaller scale, it doesn't seem implausible that they might apply the same logic to national matters.
• "My country right or wrong". Superficially similar to the collective acceptance idea but I think really more closely related to "support the troops", and a throwback to less individualistic times.