Poll: U.S. confidence in Iraq war slides
Bush prepares prime-time speech to mark year since handoff
Tuesday, June 28, 2005 Posted: 1843 GMT (0243 HKT)
The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll also found that only 37 percent of those responding believe President Bush has a clear plan for the 2-year-old war there.
Forty-five percent of the 1,009 people questioned Friday through Sunday said they did not believe the United States ever would establish a stable government in Iraq, and 53 percent said they believe the war was a mistake.
Most questions in the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The latest numbers underscore a slide in public confidence that Bush will attempt to check with a prime-time speech on the conflict Tuesday night -- the first anniversary of the restoration of the nation's sovereignty by coalition officials.
Of those surveyed, 51 percent said they want the United States to set a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq, and 44 percent said they would be willing to keep American forces there for several more years.
Last week, a bipartisan quartet of congressmen introduced a resolution that would call for Bush to submit a plan by year's end for an American pullout by the end of 2006.
But the president has said repeatedly that announcing any schedule for a withdrawal would allow insurgents to wait out U.S. troops.
"It is a critical moment in Iraq," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "The terrorists are seeking to shake our will and weaken our resolve. They know that they cannot win unless we abandon the mission before it is complete."
But barely a third of those polled -- 34 percent -- said the United States is winning the conflict against a persistent insurgency; 14 percent said the insurgents were winning and 50 percent said neither side had the upper hand.
The president's own approval rating fell to 45 percent in the most recent poll, and 53 percent said they disapproved of his job performance -- the highest disapproval mark of his presidency to date. (Full story)
Just 40 percent said they approved of Bush's handling of the war, a figure unchanged from the last poll in late May, and 58 percent disapproved -- a 2-percentage-point increase.
Sixty-one percent said they believed Bush had no clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq, compared to 37 percent who said he did. The last time the question was posed, in January, the margin was nearly even.
Fifty-three percent of those polled said they believe the March 2003 invasion was a mistake, and 46 percent said they believe launching the war was the right thing to do.
Only 43 percent said they believed the war in Iraq has made Americans safer from terrorism, and 46 percent said it had made the country less safe. That question had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
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