Bush's popularity drops more

2005-08-07 12:24

Washington - US President George W Bush took a political beating this weekend after a second opinion poll, taken after a spike in US casualties in Iraq, showed a sharp drop in public support for his Iraq policy.

The survey by Newsweek magazine indicated only 34% of Americans approved of the way Bush was handling the situation in Iraq while 61% expressed their disapproval.

The findings, made public Saturday, represented the president's lowest rating on Iraq ever, which thus far has hovered above the 40-percent mark.

They echoed a sampling conducted this past week by Ipsos-Public Affairs for the Associated Press, which indicated that just 38% of respondents approved of what Bush is doing in Iraq while 59% said they disapproved of the policies and 2% had mixed feelings about them.

At least 38 US military personnel have died in Iraq in the last 10 days - in one of the deadliest outbreaks of insurgent violence since the March 2003 US-led invasion of the country.

Iraqi insurgents mounted one of their most spectacular attacks on Wednesday when a powerful roadside bomb blew up a US armoured personnel carrier near the northwest town of Haditha, killing 14 marines on board.

As of Saturday, the overall death toll for the US military in Iraq stood at 1 823, according to the Pentagon tally.

Reflecting a gloomy mood setting in in the country, half of those polled by Newsweek said the United States was losing ground in its efforts to establish security and democracy in Iraq. Only 40% had the opposite point of view.

The previously rock-solid commitment to maintaining a US military presence in the country for as long as it would be necessary to establish a stable and democratic government there also appears to have been shaken.

Just 26% of those polled now said they supported keeping large numbers of US military personnel in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve US goals.

38 % argued they would support keeping troops there less than a year while 13% were willing to maintain that commitment for up to two years, according to the survey

As much as 12% said troops should be brought home now.

The Newsweek poll of 1 004 adults conducted on August 2-4 had a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. The margin of error for the Ipsos-Public Affairs survey conducted August 1-3 was 3.1%.

- SAPA