Poll: Americans Come Full Circle On Iraq

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: Polling

(CBS)

Six years after the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, American optimism about the situation in Iraq has returned to levels last seen in 2003, according to a new CBS News poll.

Still, most Americans continue to believe the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq in the first place. And Americans are now far more pessimistic about the situation in Afghanistan than they are the war in Iraq.

Sixty-four percent of Americans now say U.S. efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq are going at least somewhat well. That's the highest percentage since December 2003, shortly after the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein.

Just one year ago, only 43 percent described things in Iraq as going well. In June 2007, the percentage who said as much was just 22 percent. Americans began feeling more positive about the situation in Iraq last fall.

Read The Entire Poll (PDF)>

Despite the increased optimism, more than half of those surveyed – 55 percent – maintain the U.S. should not have entered the country.

Four in ten Americans now say the U.S. did the right thing in entering Iraq. Back in March 2003 – right after the initial invasion of Iraq – seven in 10 Americans said the U.S. did the right thing in entering the country.

As has been the case throughout the war, Republicans think the U.S. did the right thing, while Democrats believe the military action was a mistake.

Asked what the U.S. should have done about Iraq, just 29 percent say the U.S. strategy of removing Saddam and rebuilding Iraq was the best plan. A nearly identical percentage – 28 percent – say the U.S. should have removed the Iraqi leader and then left; another 40 percent say the U.S. should not have gotten involved at all.

(CBS)

Assessments of how President Obama is handling the war have risen since last month. Sixty-one percent now approve of the president's handling of Iraq, an increase of seven points from February. Twenty-three percent disapprove, while 16 percent don't know.

In a CBS News/New York Times poll last month, 46 percent of those surveyed said it is "very important" that the U.S. leave Iraq within 16 months. Thirty-two percent said it is "somewhat important" while 18 percent said it was not too important or not important at all.

The War In Afghanistan:

Just 33 percent of Americans now say things are going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan, while 57 percent say they are going badly.

Though this is a slightly more optimistic outlook than in December, when just 27 percent said things were going well in Afghanistan, it still reflects widespread pessimism compared to perceptions at the start of the war.

In October 2001, when the war began, 83 percent of Americans said things were going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan. That percentage reached its high of 93 percent in December of that year, and it stood at 73 percent in March 2003.

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This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1142 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone March 12-16, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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by jodyrae4 March 28, 2009 11:35 AM EDT: I agree with whosaid1; Reply to this comment


by pete202 March 26, 2009 2:50 PM EDT: Maybe you can help who is running our country Obama, Pelosi, or Reid. It seems President Obama wants to be Mr Hollywood and let Nancy Pelosi destroy our country because she hasn't a clue to what is going on in the real world and the American people better wake up.; Reply to this comment


by pete202 March 26, 2009 2:50 PM EDT: Maybe you can help who is running our country Obama, Pelosi, or Reid. It seems President Obama wants to be Mr Hollywood and let Nancy Pelosi destroy our country because she hasn't a clue to what is going on in the real world and the American people better wake up.; Reply to this comment


by schotzy81 March 23, 2009 1:47 PM EDT: Good commentary, cornbiker.; Reply to this comment


by Questionews March 23, 2009 10:45 AM EDT: Start War Crimes Trials!
Posted by didserve at 5:39 PM : Mar 20, 2009

They already did that. Saddam was tried & hung a few years ago. I was all over the news! Geez, where have you been??; Reply to this comment


by perceptions5 March 23, 2009 7:53 AM EDT: Most Ameircans (not liberals) are happy that 25 million people are FREE in Iraq.

But that would not have been the case if President Bush had not persue the Surge strategy that the Democrat Party and their fascists pals in our MSM wolfpack press tried to undermine..............just like they worked for eight years to undermine the Bush Administration.

Liberals don't like the fact that 25 million people live in a growing free Iraq. They don't like that we spent over 4,000 of our bravest and nearly $700 billion on that war to date...........

No.........they rather allow what we did in 1993 during Clinton's Administration and WATCH along with the UN for 90 days as 1 million Rwandans were slaugtered.

My Fellow Americans pick your ideology...........Liberal or Conservative.............based on real History...........; Reply to this comment


by two-cats March 21, 2009 12:44 PM EDT: Iraq was a disaster from every standpoint. We wasted trillions, made the world hate us, and lost lives in the pursuit of Bush's revenge. I get mad all over again thinking about it!; Reply to this comment


by nofoolling March 20, 2009 8:19 PM EDT: If we keep exterminating people in both of these countries sooner or later things will calm down.

According to the bush/cheney bottom line scorecard, we only need to murder another 232,000 men, women, and children for an ultimate profit near 10 trillion dollars.

I betcha if we just nuked em off the map all the fighting would stop.

Of course that would interfere with pentagon and military industrial complex planning for endless war for profit regardless of how many innocent expendable humans are killed.; Reply to this comment


by hologram5 March 20, 2009 1:03 PM EDT: This poll and the one about marijuana got mixed up. I think it should be the other way around...; Reply to this comment


by cherokeejoshua March 20, 2009 12:57 PM EDT: You didn't say who you thought should receive the credit, Shawshank, but I can only assume it's not Bush. He refused to listen when Powell and Shinseki told him the U.S. needed to send far more troops. That's why we're having this discussion six years later.

Kudos to Gen. Petraeus, but any success in this war is in spite of Bush, not because of him.; Reply to this comment