Parihaka

Poll: Most Americans Think Iraq War Not Worth Fighting
Over Half Think Rumsfeld Should be Replaced

By Christopher Muste
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 20, 2004; 5:01 PM

Most Americans now believe the war with Iraq was not worth fighting and more than half want to fire embattled Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the chief architect of that conflict, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that 56 percent of the country now believes that the cost of the conflict in Iraq outweighs the benefits, while 42 percent disagreed. It marked the first time since the war began that a clear majority of Americans have judged the war to have been a mistake.

Barely a third of the country approves of the job that Rumsfeld is doing as defense secretary, and 52 percent said President Bush should sack Rumsfeld, a view shared by a big majority of Democrats and political independents.

Still, nearly six in 10 -- 58 percent -- said the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq rather than withdraw them, a proportion that has not changed in seven months.

The political fallout over the continuing bloody chaos in Iraq clearly is taking its toll on President Bush, who today strongly defended Rumsfeld in a press conference. Bush's overall job approval stood at 48 percent while 49 percent disapproved of his performance as president. Nearly six in 10 -- 57 percent -- say they disapprove of the way the president has handled the situation in Iraq.

Six in 10 Americans also say they believe that next month's presidential elections in Iraq should be held as scheduled but expressed broad pessimism about the outcome. A 54 percent majority said they doubted that the elections will be honest and the votes counted accurately. And an identical proportion said they were not confident that the voting will produce a stable government that will rule Iraq effectively.

A total of 1,004 randomly selected Americans were interviewed Dec. 16 to 19. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.


also:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...nd_122004.html

who would replace Rumsfeld if he did go?

__________________
In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

nickshepAK

Tommy Franks?

Veni Vidi Vici

Anyone.

__________________
"Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS…" -- Thomas Paine

Julie

Colin Powell.

Parihaka

now there's a thought. personally I'm worried it would be wolfowitz, he HATES New Zealand.

Anon

Most americans are clueless on the real issues, so this poll doesnt surprise me.

-{SpoonmaN}-

Regardless of the fact that the way the war has been fought was a mistake, the US and the UK, Australia, Italy etc. have a repsonsibilty to keep their forces in Iraq until the job is done. We broke Iraq by supporting Saddam, then attacking Iraq, then sanctioning Iraq, then attacking Iraq again, so we must fix it.
And yes, Rummy most definately must go. Maybe the Bush administration should take a leaf from Clinton and appoint somone from the other party to cabinet, and make Wesley Clarke the new Secretary of defense.

smilingassassin

Personally I hope its Wolfowitz, so I can see all the liberal defeatists have heart attacks.

Anon

"liberal defeatists"

They most certainly are my friend.

Julie

The Conservative v. Liberal divide is something we should not be focusing on in solution-finding to the Iraqi insurgent problem. If we do, it will only make matters worse.

Anon

You should forget the daily headlines entirely.

Keep your eye fixed on the prize.

smilingassassin

Hit the nail right on the head.

Officer of Engineers

I HOPE TO HELL NOT!!!!!! Why would anyone want a man who wanted to start WWIII over Kosovo near nukes is beyond me!

__________________
Chimo

nickshepAK

General Wesley Clark is to smart of a man to get tangled up in this disaster. Plus, he has hinted at running for the nomination again in '08. I doubt very much anyone with higher aspirations for their future would want to get involved with this mess.

I dont see why Tommy Franks couldnt land the job if he wanted it.

nickshepAK

Not quite.

"Clark's problem was that he was a great general but not always a perfect soldier--at least when it came to saluting and saying, "Yes, sir." In fact, when he got orders he didn't like, he said so and pushed to change them."
>snip
"More presciently, Clark was right about the Russians. When fewer than 200 lightly armed Russian peacekeepers barnstormed from Bosnia to the Pristina airport in Kosovo to upstage the arrival of NATO peacekeepers, Clark was rightly outraged. Russians did not win the war, and he did not want them to win the peace."

"Clark asked NATO helicopters and ground troops to seize the airport before the Russians could arrive. But a British general, absurdly saying he feared World War III (in truth the Russians had no cards to play) appealed to London and Washington to delay the order."

"The result was a humiliation for NATO, a tonic for the Russian military and an important lesson for the then-obscure head of the Russian national security council, Vladimir Putin. As later Russian press reports showed, Putin knew far more about the Pristina operation than did the Russian defense or foreign ministers. It was no coincidence that a few weeks afterward, Russian bombers buzzed NATO member Iceland for the first time in a decade. A few weeks after that, with Putin as prime minister, Russian troops invaded Chechnya. Putin learned the value of boldness in the face of Western hesitation. Clark learned that he had no backup in Washington."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true