One Idiot Stands in the Way

Polls show Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout.

A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.

The director of another Iraqi polling firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being killed, said public opinion surveys he conducted last month showed that 80 percent of Iraqis who were questioned favored an immediate withdrawal. Eight-five percent of Sunnis in that poll supported an immediate withdrawal, a number virtually unchanged in the past two years, except for the two months after the Samarra bombing, when the number fell to about 70 percent, the poll director said.

"The very fact that there is such a low support for American forces has to do with the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis," said Mansoor Moaddel, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who commissioned a poll earlier this year that also found widespread support for a withdrawal.

A US poll shows that 72 percent of troops want out of Iraq in a year

Seventy two percent of U.S. troops in Iraq believe the United States should pull out within one year, a column by Nicholas Kristof in Tuesday's New York Times reveals. The poll was conducted by Zogby International and is the first poll to examine the attitudes of those currently serving in the wartorn nation.

Only 23 percent backed Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately..."

While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis...

By a 2-1 ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.

This first systematic look at the views of the U.S. troops on the ground suggests that our present strategy in Iraq is failing badly. The troops overwhelmingly don't want to "stay the course," and they don't seem to think the American strategy can succeed.

A poll of U.S. citizens shows that 58 percent want U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008.

Nearly six in ten Americans want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either immediately or within a year, and more would rather have Congress running U.S. policy in the conflict than President Bush, according to a CNN poll out Tuesday.

The poll found most Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq, with 21 percent wanting an immediate pullout and 37 percent saying troops should be home within a year. Another 39 percent said the troops should stay in Iraq as long as needed.

They were more closely divided on the issue of funding the president's "New Way Forward," with 52 percent saying Congress should block funds for additional troops and 43 percent opposing such a move.

On May 11 2007 the Iraq parliament expressed the need for a timetable for U.S. to get out of Iraq.

A majority of Iraq's parliament has expressed support for a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels.

Much like what Democrats have demanded in the U.S. Congress, the Iraq draft would create a timeline for a gradual departure and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

President Bush has fought similar efforts in Congress to impose a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal. He vetoed legislation last week that would have required U.S. forces to begin leaving Iraq this year. The House on Thursday passed legislation that would release $43 billion immediately for military operations but would tie future money to Iraqi approval of laws dividing oil revenues among Iraq's ethnic groups and permitting some former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to hold government jobs.

In both Iraq and the United States, frustration is deepening among lawmakers and the public over Bush's elevated troop levels, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread violence. At the same time, Bush and al-Maliki are dispatching emissaries in an urgent trans-Atlantic gambit to shore up support.

The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to al-Sadr, and it has gained support from other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. As many as 144 lawmakers have signed the proposal, a majority in the 275-member parliament.

"We think that America has committed a grave injustice against the Iraqi people and against the glorious history of Iraq, when they destroyed our institutions, and then rebuilt them in the wrong way," said Hussein al-Falluji, from the largest Sunni coalition in parliament, and a supporter of the timetable proposal.

Summary

1. Iraqi citizens want the U.S. Out of Iraq
2. U.S. Troops want the U.S. Out of Iraq
3. U.S. citizens want the U.S. Out of Iraq
4. Iraq parliament wants the U.S. Out of Iraq
5. U.S. Congress wants the U.S. Out of Iraq

One idiot stands in the way.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/