Gallup: 55% Now Back U.S. Pullout from Iraq Within a Year

Editor & Publisher ^ | 08/03/2006 | E&P Staff

[LM_Guy]

NEW YORK A new Gallup poll released today revealed another upward bump in the number of Amercians who now want a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in the next 12 months.

That number now stands at 55%, with 19% supporting immediate withdrawal and another 36% wanting it done by August 2007.

"While the percentage of Americans who favor a withdrawal of all U.S. troops either now or within a year is not a supermajority, it is a majority, suggesting that the Democratic leadership is speaking to an issue that resonates with many Americans," Frank Newport, director of the Gallup Poll, writes today.

Another majority, 54%, now say that the U.S. invasion in 2003 was a "mistake."

The partisan divided remains wide on the withdrawal question, with 77% of Democrats wanting U.S. troops out in a year and only 28% of Republicans. Independents back a 12-month pullout at 56%.

Gallup polled 1,002 adult Americans at the very end of July.

[Pox]

BS. Your 'analysis' couldn't be further from reality, IMO. I do not trust polls at all and polls like this one whose entire purpose is geared toward a specific result that those who commissioned the poll were seeking are wholly without merit, IMO.

Fortunately, 1,000 peopled polled are certainly not precisely representing 300 million Americans, IMO.

[Candor7]

Like I've said many times, polls today merely measure the effectiveness of Liberal Socialist Wingnut MSM propaganda. The poll results are propaganda themselves.

Poll people who do not have televisions in their homes and watch the differerence.

[MikeA]

55% Democrats polled again???

[My2Cents]

The failure here is the failure of the Bush Administration to continue to make the case for why we're in Iraq, and why we need to see the effort through. Bush typically allows support for his Iraq policy to erode until it's dangerously low, then he'll make a series of speeches about it, stopping the hemmorage of support and reversing public opinion, but then will go for months without talking in a major way about the effort and progress there, the result being that public support again collapses.

The public relations/communications effort of this White House is one of the worst ever, and I can't figure out why that's the case.

[mplsconservative]

55% Democrats polled again???

Probably more like 60%. These polls are just a load of biased cr*p.

[edzo4]

I disagree the administration has said over and over that this would be a long drawn out battle.
the president does not control the media

which by the way have from day one called iraq a mistake and a quaqmire and act like the biggest threat that we face is bush listening to your phone call or seeing what book you took out of the libray and CO2

[finnman69]

It's going to take the shock of an entire city being destroyed somewhere in th world to show people how serious is the threat of islamic terroism.

[middie]

We ''won'' the war. That was the easy part. It has been the the major FUBAR decisions of the administration that has screwed-up what could have, and should have, been a more orderly peace. The list of military mistakes made by non-military people, GW, Rumsfeld, Fief and the other DOD civilians, is long enough to be the underlying cause of the current situation. What exists now was predicted by former officers who pointed out that the JCS was a sinecure for a bevy of ''yes men''generals who shivered in their shoes at the thought of suggesting to Rumsfeld that he might be making an error during the early post-Sadaam days.

The clearest illustration of the mess seen by senior officers was that seven recently retired 3 & 4 star generals turned down an invitation the be Army Cheif of Staff until finally Gen. Shoomaker accepted. He was the eighth invitee to the ball. Those other seven didn't want to be thrown that ball of glue with Rumsfeld's mess stuck to it.

We had a window of opportunity to secure Iraq but Rumsfeld stood by and quipped that memorable axiom that sometimes democracy is messy - among others that avoided the scene on the ground.

There is no one other than the president and his people who are responsible for the current intractable situation, trying to casually pass it off to any previous administration is an admission of culpability and an exercise in futility.

[mewzilla]

I'll bet most of the people polled couldn't find Iraq on a map.

[capitalist229]

IB4TZ

[LM_Guy]

That true of most americans about almost any country on the map, not just Iraq.

[Smogger]

My brother just joined the Marines. It makes me sick when I read crap like this. Weak kneed politicians, and hand wringing citizens at home that only follow the war in the MSM are putting my brother and thousands of other troops Americans in danger.

[My2Cents]

Look at the way the White House functions and behaves. Do they give the impression that there's a war on? The fact that the president doesn't control the media is reason enough for them to be making the extra effort to be engaged in a continual communications strategy on Iraq. Watching the president, he gives the impression that even he's not convinced that his policy in Iraq is working. I'm talking perceptions here, not reality, but these perceptions influence public opinion. Everyone admits that Bush is not a great communicator, and the erosion of public support for the war on terror is the result of that.

[LM_Guy]

You make very good point about the Administration's ability to communicate effectively with the American people.
Plus the Anti-bush media does help/add to that problem also.

[shrinkermd]

One problem with public opinion polls is the nature of the sample. Many people opine even though they know nothing of the issue.

George Gallup used to solve this by "filter" questions such as "do you feel knowledgeable enough to answer this ..." This really boosted the no opinion or don't know contingent.

Note also that the poll, such as it is, shows people trending to the middle rather than an abrupt withdrawal. This would reinforce the idea that people are making decisions on the basis of incomplete knowledge or emotionalism and hedge their bets by going to the middle.

Finally, far from their being pools of public opinion to tap out there on this or any subject, what happens is pundits and the elite by asking the question determine what is on the top of people's minds; hence, what is and is not current public opinion.

[mugs99]

I back a pull out today....if we were done.

We were done when we pulled Saddam out of his spider hole. We should have turned him over to the Kurds and pulled out then.
.

[mass55th]

Smogger, I wish your brother well and will keep him in my prayers. I wish there was a way to eliminate all reporters from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. They do none of our soldiers any good and only provide the terrorists with the media coverage they crave. I was watching a segment on Fox News the other day about Fallujah and how it is now a place where people go to escape the violence of Baghdad. Then yesterday I read an article that the insurgents are looking to take it back. Then today I heard John Scott say Lebanon is "under siege." Personally I think he could have used better terminology, like the IDF is "liberating the country from the Hezbollah". The way he said it made it sound like Israel is the bad guy. It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to watch Fox News anymore.

[My2Cents]

No doubt. Let me clarify that I totally support Bush's policy in Iraq, and on the war on terror in general. The news media attack those policies daily, and clearly the White House doesn't have a sufficiently successful communications strategy to counteract the corrosive effect of the MSM's naysaying. We're having more success against the foreign enemies than we're having against our domestic enemies.

[Jeff Head]

IMHO, it is clear that the radical islamiics, like Hezbollah, the liberals in this nation and across the west who abbett and appease them, the main stream media, and other nations (like Iran, Syria, N. Korea, Red China, Cuba, Venezuela and to some extent Russia and France) who are seeking to get political or ideological gain from this even by castigating Israel and the U.S.,IMHO are forming the nucleus of a cabal of enemies dedicated to bringing down western liberty based on fundamental Judeao-Christian moral principle.

We are, in many ways, at that point in time relative to a major third world war, that the Spanish civil war represented in the second world war.

There is a terrible and deadly potential for much worse looming on the horizon. It is apparent, at least to me, that we cannot avoid all of it at this point as 911 and events since have already shown. But, unless we act decisively and, I might add, ruthlessly, against our avowed enemies (like we ended up having to do with the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists in World War II), we may be forced to experience far worse than what World War II brough upon this country.

Better to mitigate the difficulty now, than wait for it to become much worse in the future.

[lugsoul]

If you think past wars between nation-states are an appropriate comparison for what we are doing in Iraq, then I'm sorry I responded to your post at all, because your opinion can simply be dismissed out of hand.

By the way, the wars you mention were ended by formal surrender, with the exception of the formal armistice in WWI. Do you really think that's how this one is going to end?