{news} Zogby poll - U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in2006

[John Battista]

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><http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075>http://www.zogby.com/news/R
eadNews.dbm?ID=1075
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>U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
>
>     * Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to
> heed Bush call to stay "as long as they are needed"
>     * While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
>     * Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
>     * Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11, most
> don't blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
>     * Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
>     * Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
>
>An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think
>the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in
>four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby
>International survey shows.
>
>The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College's Center for
>Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in
>various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq
>"immediately," while another 22% said they should leave in the next six
>months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months,
>while 23% said they should stay "as long as they are needed."
>
>Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the
>poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard
>said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so.
>Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave
>Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National
>Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of
>Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored
>withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.
>
>The troops have drawn different conclusions about fellow citizens back
>home. Asked why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop
>withdrawal from Iraq, 37% of troops serving there said those Americans are
>unpatriotic, while 20% believe people back home don't believe a continued
>occupation will work. Another 16% said they believe those favoring a quick
>withdrawal do so because they oppose the use of the military in a
>pre-emptive war, while 15% said they do not believe those Americans
>understand the need for the U.S. troops in Iraq.
>
>The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say
>the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is
>either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding
>of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly "to
>retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks," 77% said they also
>believe the main or a major reason for the war was "to stop Saddam from
>protecting al Qaeda in Iraq."
>
>"Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is
>not a reason for U.S. troops being there," said Pollster John Zogby,
>President and CEO of Zogby International. "Instead, that initial rationale
>went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real
>mission became to remove Saddam Hussein." Just 24% said that "establishing
>a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a
>major reason for the war. Only small percentages see the mission there as
>securing oil supplies (11%) or to provide long-term bases for US troops in
>the region (6%).
>
>The continuing insurgent attacks have not turned U.S. troops against the
>Iraqi population, the survey shows. More than 80% said they did not hold a
>negative view of Iraqis because of those attacks. About two in five see
>the insurgency as being comprised of discontented Sunnis with very few
>non-Iraqi helpers. "There appears to be confusion on this," Zogby said.
>But, he noted, less than a third think that if non-Iraqi terrorists could
>be prevented from crossing the border into Iraq, the insurgency would end.
>A majority of troops (53%) said the U.S. should double both the number of
>troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.
>
>The survey shows that most U.S. military personnel in-country have a clear
>sense of right and wrong when it comes to using banned weapons against the
>enemy, and in interrogation of prisoners. Four in five said they oppose
>the use of such internationally banned weapons as napalm and white
>phosphorous. And, even as more photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq surface
>around the world, 55% said it is not appropriate or standard military
>conduct to use harsh and threatening methods against insurgent prisoners
>in order to gain information of military value.
>
>Three quarters of the troops had served multiple tours and had a longer
>exposure to the conflict: 26% were on their first tour of duty, 45% were
>on their second tour, and 29% were in Iraq for a third time or more.
>
>A majority of the troops serving in Iraq said they were satisfied with the
>war provisions from Washington. Just 30% of troops said they think the
>Department of Defense has failed to provide adequate troop protections,
>such as body armor, munitions, and armor plating for vehicles like
>HumVees. Only 35% said basic civil infrastructure in Iraq, including
>roads, electricity, water service, and health care, has not improved over
>the past year. Three of every four were male respondents, with 63% under
>the age of 30.
>
>The survey included 944 military respondents interviewed at several
>undisclosed locations throughout Iraq. The names of the specific locations
>and specific personnel who conducted the survey are being withheld for
>security purposes. Surveys were conducted face-to-face using random
>sampling techniques. The margin of error for the survey, conducted Jan. 18
>through Feb. 14, 2006, is +/- 3.3 percentage points.
>====================
>
>"The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?"
>New York Times - February 28, 2006 - Nicholas D. Kristof OpEd
>
>When President Bush held a public meeting with troops by satellite last
>fall, they were miraculously upbeat. And all along, unrepentant hawks
>(most of whom have never been to Iraq) have insisted that journalists are
>misreporting Iraq and that most soldiers are gung-ho about their mission.
>
>Hogwash! A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers
>overwhelmingly want out of Iraq - and soon.
>
>The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according
>to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne
>College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay
>in Iraq?"
>
>Only 23 percent backed Mr. 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."
>
>That's one more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in
>Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it
>- and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of
>Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further
>erodes military morale.
>
>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.
>
>So what would it take to win in Iraq? Maybe that was the single most
>depressing finding in this poll.
>
>By a two-to-one 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.
>
>It's tempting, but not very helpful, to repeat that the fatal mistake was
>invading Iraq three years ago and leave it at that. That's easy for a
>columnist to say; the harder thing for a policy maker is to figure out
>what we do next, now that we're already there.
>
>I still believe that while the war was a dreadful mistake, an immediate
>pullout would also be a misstep: anyone who says that Iraq can't get worse
>hasn't seen a country totally torn apart by chaos and civil war. Mr. Bush
>is right about the consequences of an immediate pullout - to Iraq, and
>also to American influence around the world.
>
>But while we shouldn't rush for the exits immediately, we should lay out a
>timetable for withdrawal that would remove all troops by the end of next
>year. And we should state clearly that we will not keep any military bases
>in Iraq - that's a no-brainer, for it costs us nothing, but our hedging on
>bases antagonizes Iraqi nationalists and results in more dead Americans.
>
>Such a timetable would force Iraqis to prepare - politically and
>militarily - to run their own country. The year or two of transition would
>galvanize Iraqi Shiites to find a modus vivendi with Sunnis while
>undermining the insurgents' arguments that they are nationalists
>protecting the motherland from Yankee crusaders.
>
>True, a timetable is arbitrary and risky, for it could just encourage
>insurgents to hang tight for another couple of years. But we're being
>killed - literally - because of nationalist suspicions among Iraqis that
>we're just after their oil and bases and that we're going to stay forever.
>It's crucial that we defuse that nationalist rage.
>
>For now, we've become the piñata of Iraqi politics, something for Iraqi
>demagogues to bash to boost their own legitimacy. Moktada al-Sadr, one of
>the scariest Iraqi leaders, has very shrewdly used his denunciations of
>the U.S. to boost his own political following and influence across Iraq;
>that's our gift to him, a consequence of our myopia. And many ordinary
>Iraqis are buying into this scapegoating of the U.S. Edward Wong, one of
>my intrepid Times colleagues in Baghdad, quoted a clothing merchant named
>Abdul-Qader Ali as saying: "I can tell you the main reason behind all our
>woes - it is America. Everything that is going on between Sunnis and
>Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."
>
>Will a timetable work? I don't know, but it's a better bet than our
>present policy of whistling in the dark. And it's what the troops favor -
>and they're the ones who have Iraq combat experience. It's time our
>commander in chief stopped stage-managing his troops and listened to them.
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