New poll show Americans losing Iraq

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday April 28, 2004 23:07 by David C.

A new poll released today shows that a majority of Iraqis believe that attacks on US forces are justified.

The CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll is the first poll since the invasion to cover urban and rural areas throughout Iraq, representing about 93 percent of the population. It was conduced between March 22 and April 9 - before the latest flare-up of violence - and has a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Some highlights from the poll:

-52% percent said attacks on US forces could be justified some or all of the time. 47 % said they believed attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq could not be justified.

-46% said the war had done more harm than good, while 33% said the war had done more good than harm

-57% want US/UK forces to leave immediately, the poll said, whereas 36% said troops should stay longer.

- 67% said that US troops were not trying at all to keep ordinary Iraqis from being killed in exchanges of gunfire.

-71% said they saw troops mostly as occupiers, while only 19 % said they viewed them as liberators. Asked how they viewed troops at the time of the invasion a year ago, the respondents were split, with 43% saying they had seen the coalition forces as occupiers and another 43% saying they had considered them liberators.

Again, these poll results are from BEFORE the recent Shia uprising and the attack by US forces on Fallujah, which have clearly increased animosity towards the Americans dramatically throughout Iraq.

The Americans are losing. The entire nation of Iraq is uniting against them and their choice is therefore either to surrender and leave, or to commit atrocities on a massive scale in full view of the world. This has been a tragedy for everyone involved, however a humiliating defeat for the US in Iraq will make the world a safer place. This poll shows that defeat to be merely a matter of time.