War 'wrong', say Americans

2005-10-25 12:14

Washington - For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.

Fifty-three percent of those asked in the Harris Interactive survey felt that "taking military action against Iraq was the ... wrong thing to do", against 34 percent who thought it was correct, the newspaper said.

The percentage of people opposing the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 was up from a figure of 49 percent in a parallel poll in September, rising above 50 percent for the first time since the surveys began.

A year before, in September 2004, both sides were even at 43 percent.

Deemed

The latest poll also found that 66 percent of Americans believed President George Bush was doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, against 32 percent who deemed it "excellent" or "pretty good".

With the number of US military fatalities in Iraq approaching 2 000, 44 percent of those polled said the situation for US troops in Iraq was getting worse, compared to 19 percent who thought it was improving.

Sixty-one percent were not confident US policies in Iraq would succeed - two points higher than in September.

The poll asked the opinions of 1 833 people online from October 11-17.

- AFP