USA public now firmly against the war

[karlos]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opposition to the Iraq war has climbed to a record high and President George W. Bush's approval rating dropped to a new low amid growing dissent from members of his own Republican party over his war strategy, according to a new USAToday/Gallup poll.

Bush's approval dropped to 29 percent in the poll taken Friday through Sunday, down from 33 percent in early June, USA Today reported on Tuesday.

One in five Americans said the increase in U.S. forces in Iraq this year has made the situation there better while half said it has made no difference, the newspaper said.

More than seven in 10 Americans favor withdrawing nearly all U.S troops from Iraq by April, the newspaper said.
Reuters Pictures

More than half, 55 percent, said Congress should wait to hear an assessment from Gen. David Petraeus before developing new Iraq policy, the report said.

Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is due to deliver his findings in September, but 40 percent of those polled said Congress should act now, the paper said.

Sixty-two percent of those polled said the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, marking the first time that number has topped 60 percent in this survey, USA Today said.

The poll also showed support for Bush slipping among Republicans who gave him a 68 percent rating, down from an average 92 percent in his first term and 82 percent earlier in his second, USA Today said.

According to the report, nearly four in 10 Republicans cited the immigration debate, which ended in defeat for Bush's overhaul proposal, as the reason for losing confidence in him.

The poll of 1,014 adults, taken Friday through Sunday has an error margin of plus or minus three percentage point.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=20 07-07-10T121716Z_01_BUL018831_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L1- RelatedNews-2

[egw]

Funny, this week results for a poll taken in Australia came out. (Going from memory, but the essential details are accurate) 31% wanted to "stay as long as it took," 29% wanted to withdraw immediately, and 26% wanted the bulk of troups withdrawn by early 2008.

How was it framed in the news article?

"More people favour sticking in out in Iraq than any other option!"

Love their maths!

[acrobat74]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

Raids normally took place between midnight and 5 am, according to Sgt.
John Bruhns, 29, of Philadelphia, who estimates that he took part in
raids of nearly 1,000 Iraqi homes. He served in Baghdad and Abu
Ghraib, a city infamous for its prison, located twenty miles west of
the capital, with the Third Brigade, First Armor Division, First
Battalion, for one year beginning in April 2003. His descriptions of
raid procedures closely echoed those of eight other veterans who
served in locations as diverse as Kirkuk, Samarra, Baghdad, Mosul and
Tikrit.

"You want to catch them off guard," Sergeant Bruhns ­ex­plained. "You
want to catch them in their sleep." About ten troops were involved in
each raid, he said, with five stationed outside and the rest searching
the home.

Once they were in front of the home, troops, some wearing Kevlar
helmets and flak vests with grenade launchers mounted on their
weapons, kicked the door in, according to Sergeant Bruhns, who
dispassionately described the procedure:

"You run in. And if there's lights, you turn them on--if the lights
are working. If not, you've got flashlights.... You leave one rifle
team outside while one rifle team goes inside. Each rifle team leader
has a headset on with an earpiece and a microphone where he can
communicate with the other rifle team leader that's outside.

"You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out
of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall. You have
junior-level troops, PFCs [privates first class], specialists will run
into the other rooms and grab the family, and you'll group them all
together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds and
you make sure there's no weapons or anything that they can use to
attack us.

"You get the interpreter and you get the man of the home, and you have
him at gunpoint, and you'll ask the interpreter to ask him: 'Do you
have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda, anything at
all--anything--anything in here that would lead us to believe that you
are somehow involved in insurgent activity or anti-coalition forces
activity?'

"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sergeant
Bruhns said. "So what you'll do is you'll take his sofa cushions and
you'll dump them. If he has a couch, you'll turn the couch upside
down. You'll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you'll throw
everything on the floor, and you'll take his drawers and you'll dump
them.... You'll open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on
the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just
hit it.

"And if you find something, then you'll detain him. If not, you'll
say, 'Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.' So you've just
humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his
entire family and you've destroyed his home. And then you go right
next door and you do the same thing in a hundred homes."

[Long Tooth]