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sonz
01-23-2007, 09:14 PM
If the message of November 7th wasn’t clear, a series of polls in January are – growing opposition to the Iraq war, majority support for removing the U.S. military and a super majority opposed to sending more troops.

The public wants Congress to use the power of the purse to prevent an increase in troops in Iraq and to develop a time table for withdrawal. The polls find the country on the wrong track with little confidence in the leadership of the country, from either party, to get the United States on the right track.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found Bush’s popularity is at an all-time low with only Presidents Nixon and Truman ever being lower. Bush's overall approval rating is 33%, matching the lowest it has been in Post-ABC polls since he took office in 2001. Equally telling is the finding that 51% of Americans now strongly disapprove of his performance in office, the worst rating of his presidency. Just 17% strongly approve of the way he is handling his job.

An Associated Press poll, released on January 22nd, found that 65% disapprove of Bush's handling of the Iraq War. A January 18th Newsweek poll found Americans were even more discouraged about Iraq, 70% disapprove Bush’s handling of the war, up from 63% in August. And, 67% believe we are losing ground in Iraq with 64% believing it has not made the U.S. safer from terrorism. According to Post/ABC only 29% approve of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, which is only one percentage point off his career low recorded a month ago, and 70% disapprove. Similarly, Bush's approval rating on handling terrorism is at a near-low, with just 46% giving him positive marks and 52% negative marks.

UPI/Zogby asked the question a little differently in an interactive poll conducted from January 16th to 18th. They found that 55.2% rated Bush's Iraq performances as “poor,” 15.8% considered it “fair” and 21.5% said it was “good”; with only 7.1% said “excellent.” Even among military personnel, Bush didn't fare well with 48.1% saying his Iraq performance was “poor” and only 10.9% saying it was “excellent.”

According to Post/ABC nearly two-thirds of Americans say it was a mistake to go to war, the highest negative response since the war began. A January Bloomberg/LA Times poll found 62% believe the war was not worth it, up from 56% in December. AP reports only 35% support the war.

And, according to Post/ABC News 55% of Americans now say the president has not made the country safer, the first time a majority of the country has reached that conclusion. More than three in five said that it is better to seek a solution to the Iraq conflict through diplomatic and political means, but three in four said they believe Bush is relying mostly on military means.

According to Post/ABC, for the first-time a majority, 52% would prefer to see U.S. forces withdrawn from Iraq to avoid further casualties rather than leaving them until order is restored. Bloomberg/LA Times found 65% support beginning to bring the troops home within the year and by 48% to 46% bringing the troops home rather than staying in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. And, by a large majority 59% to 35% favor a time table for withdrawal, the same was found in the Pew Poll.

AP reports 70% oppose the so-called “surge,” and Newsweek reports 68% oppose Bush’s plan to increase troops and 50% want the troop levels reduced. Bush’s speech only slightly increased support for sending more troops, still an unpopular idea. According to AP, almost one-third of the public, 31% favor the plan, an improvement from 26% in a survey done almost entirely before he spoke to the country January 10. The Post-ABC poll found 65% of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq; it was 61% immediately after the president unveiled the plan on January 10.

Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows the public opposes Bush's decision to dispatch 21,500 additional troops by a margin of 61% to 31%.

According to the Post/ABC poll just 26% of Americans saying the country is heading in the right direction and 71% saying the country is seriously off track. That is the worst these ratings have been in more than a decade. AP reports that two-thirds of Americans, 66%, think the country is on the wrong track. That is about the same as a year ago, when 65% thought so, the poll found. This is a reversal from mid-January 2002, when 68% said the country was on the right track and 29% thought it was going in the wrong direction. Nearly two-thirds, 60%, have no confidence that Congress or the White House can work together to solve U.S. problems.

When it comes to the Democrats, according to the AP poll only four in 10 think the country will be better off with Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives and Senate, while 18% think it will be worse off and thirty-nine percent think it will not make much difference. Bloomberg/ LA Times and the Pew Poll found that 70% didn’t think Bush had a plan to bring the war to successful completion but 68% didn’t think the Democrats did either. The Post-ABC News poll found that a majority of Americans do not have confidence in the Democrats with 43% approving of the job Congress is doing, compared to 50% who disapprove. The Post/ABC poll did find more confidence in the Democrats by a margin of 60% to 33%.

Voters want Congress to act, 59% of all Americans, including more than a quarter of Republicans, want Congress to block the president's plan to send more troops, according to the Post/ABC poll. Bloomberg/LA Times reports that by a landslide voters believe the Democrats should stop Bush’s surge by withholding funding, 69% to 22%.

The message of opposition to the Iraq War, expressed in the election on November 7th is seen even more clearly in polling since the election. Indeed, the anti-Iraq war viewpoint of Americans is growing stronger. And, there is definite opposition to Bush’s plan to increase troops in Iraq and a desire to see the Democrats take action to prevent the so-called surge. However, there is not a lot of confidence in the Democrats, no doubt if the Democrats “buy” Bush’s war by allowing the surge or approving the supplemental appropriation there will be even less confidence in the Democrats ability to get the country on the right track and end the war.

-- Kevin Zeese is Director of Democracy Rising (www.DemocracyRising.US) and a co-founder of VotersForPeace.US.
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Keltoi
01-24-2007, 01:12 PM
I hope no president bases policy on poll results. If we had the 24 hour sensationalist media back in WWII the U.S. and U.K. never would have won that war. The media is fickle, and to a large degree so are the people.
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shible
01-27-2007, 04:58 PM
:sl:

FALLUJAH, Jan. 17 (IPS) - A stepped up military offensive that targets mosques, religious leaders and Islamic customs is leading many Iraqis to believe that the U.S.-led invasion really was a 'holy war'

here is the source

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36206
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shible
01-27-2007, 05:28 PM
:sl:

Government auditors told Congress Thursday that waste and fraud in the reconstruction of Iraq have been rampant. They predict they will uncover losses in the billions of dollars. Key Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee demanded an accounting within two months.

here is the link

http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-...m?rss=politics

:sl:
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Keltoi
01-27-2007, 10:35 PM
If insurgents are using mosques for cover that nullifies the protected status of these sites. It is widely known that insurgents have used mosques for safe-haven and to store weapons and ammunition. The ROE before the latest troop surge recommended Iraqi soldiers storm these buildings to flush the insurgents out of them, but that had limited success. I believe the new ROE recommends a siege of these buildings, not unlike what the Israelis did when Palestinians hid in the Church of the Nativity. Limit the amount of damage to these sites, but do not let insurgents find safe-haven there.
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shible
01-28-2007, 03:35 AM
:sl:


The Archbishop of Canterbury has accused the UK government of placing Christians in the Middle East at risk through its actions in Iraq.

If there is a repost then Please ignore this.

here is the link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6205299.stm

:sl:
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shible
01-28-2007, 03:39 AM
:sl:

Friday 26 January 2007

Top White House officials are scrambling to prevent a showdown over the Iraq war that could tear apart the Republican Party and severely undermine President Bush's plan to increase U.S. troop levels.

A top GOP staffer says more than 70 senators would oppose the surge if their vote matched their comments in private meetings. "The White House is trying to but they really don't know how to handle this," said a senior GOP aide involved in the talks.


here is the link

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012607T.shtml


:sl:
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Woodrow
01-28-2007, 04:32 AM
I sometimes wonder just exactly what part of "We the American people are fed up with the way we have been handling the Mid-East" ; Mr. Texas-Shrub fails to understand.
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Woodrow
01-28-2007, 04:35 AM
I believe all of these threads need to be merged. We now have at least 6 threads Dealing with The public dissatisfaction with the way the US is handling Iraq.

Be patient, I'm starting the merging.
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shible
01-28-2007, 05:17 AM
:sl:

format_quote Originally Posted by Woodrow
I believe all of these threads need to be merged. We now have at least 6 threads Dealing with The public dissatisfaction with the way the US is handling Iraq.

Be patient, I'm starting the merging.
I shall add one more for this cause

For the Republicans, there are two ways out of Iraq. They can either go out like Eisenhower or like Nixon.

As the first Republican to occupy the White House since the coming of the New Deal, Dwight Eisenhower could have chosen to divide the public and try to roll back Franklin Roosevelt's handiwork. In fact, he didn't give that option a moment's consideration. Social Security and unions, he concluded, were here to stay; any attempt to undo them, he wrote, would consign the Republicans to permanent minority status. Ike also ended the Korean War without attacking Democrats in the process.



here is the link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...601336_pf.html
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shible
01-28-2007, 05:23 AM
:sl:

here is the last post of this series

Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets.

A sampling of celebrities and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war.

Standing on her toes to reach the microphone, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold told the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar."

The sixth-grader from Harvard, Massachusetts, the youngest speaker on the National Mall stage, organized a petition drive at her school against the war. "I encourage the youth of America to rise up and tell our government, 'Changes have to be made,' " she said.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war.


here is the source

[PIE]http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/27/ira....ap/index.html[/PIE]
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shible
01-31-2007, 02:17 PM
:sl:

Could Haditha be just the tip of the mass grave? The corpses we have glimpsed, the grainy footage of the cadavers and the dead children; could these be just a few of many? Does the handiwork of America's army of the slums go further?


It's no good saying "a few bad apples." All occupation armies are corrupted. But do they all commit war crimes? The Algerians are still uncovering the mass graves left by the French paras who liquidated whole villages. We know of the rapist-killers of the Russian army in Chechnya.

We have all heard of Bloody Sunday. The Israelis sat and watched while their proxy Lebanese militia butchered and eviscerated its way through 1,700 Palestinians. And of course the words My Lai are now uttered again. Yes, the Nazis were much worse. And the Japanese. And the Croatian Ustashi. But this is us. This is our army. These young soldiers are our representatives in Iraq. And they have innocent blood on their hands.

I suspect part of the problem is that we never really cared about Iraqis, which is why we refused to count their dead. Once the Iraqis turned upon the army of occupation with their roadside bombs and suicide cars, they became Arab "gooks," the evil sub-humans whom the Americans once identified in Vietnam. Get a president to tell us that we are fighting evil and one day we will wake to find that a child has horns, a baby has cloven feet.


here is the link


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article624173.ece


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/272620_haditha04.html
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KAding
01-31-2007, 09:49 PM
Of course, the support is dropping. Muslims are killing eachother at such phenomenal rates in Iraq that the US presence is appearing almost insignificant. US troops have little influence over the bloody attacks between the different Muslim communities.

Creating stability is simply not something they can achieve. They might as well go home than.
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Keltoi
01-31-2007, 09:58 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by KAding
Of course, the support is dropping. Muslims are killing eachother at such phenomenal rates in Iraq that the US presence is appearing almost insignificant. US troops have little influence over the bloody attacks between the different Muslim communities.

Creating stability is simply not something they can achieve. They might as well go home than.
I agree with you. The situation in Iraq has less and less to do with the U.S. and more about Iraqis themselves. Or I should say those Iraqis and IRANIANS whose goal is to create as much chaos as possible. Yes, the U.S. military can fight "insurgents" and kill hundreds of them, but that isn't going to stop one guy from taping a bomb to himself and blowing up innocent people.
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tomtomsmom
01-31-2007, 11:20 PM
This war should have never started and I am glad to see that my fellow Americans are starting to agree with me. I know some of the soldiers over there and every one of them think that they should go home. There is no good that can do. It just keeps getting worse.
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NobleMuslimUK
02-05-2007, 04:37 PM
I never knew this war had support to start off with, going by the mass anti war protests. This war was forced on people whether your Iraqi or a westerner. Since we have all been dragged into this war, we have been left arguing to ourselves and others what the justification is, when there is none. What the motive is, we see that becoming clear with every passing day.
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Keltoi
02-05-2007, 08:19 PM
What the media doesn't tell you about these "massive war protests", is that it is sponsored and supported by the far-left. These aren't "popular" protests, such as those during the Vietnam era.
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