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Swing voters, politicians: 'Dubya
duped us'
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
Independent voters and members of Congress continued to
raise doubts about President George W Bush's war on Iraq
on Tuesday.
In a poll
released by the University of
Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes
(PIPA), swing voters - people who consider themselves
independent of both major political parties and very
likely to vote in next year's elections - were
considerably more critical of Bush's handling of Iraq
and wider foreign policy than the general public and
more likely to say the president deliberately misled the
public about the reasons for the war.
Members of
Congress - including some from the president's own
Republican Party - continued sharp attacks against the
administration for misleading the public, classifying
portions of a Congressional report on intelligence
failures leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and failing to
disclose its own estimates about the costs of the
occupation of Iraq, which began in April after a
three-week US-led attack.
The poll, overseen by
PIPA and carried out by California-based Knowledge
Networks, found that an absolute majority of
independents believed that both Bush and his
administration were misleading when they "presented
evidence to justify going to war with Iraq".
By
contrast, 42 percent among the general public said the
administration was misleading, while only 36 percent of
them said Bush himself misled on the justifications for
war.
A similar majority of swing voters (52
percent) said that "the fact that the president
presented information that was in fact false" lowered
their confidence in the president some (34 percent) or a
lot (18 percent). Only 40 percent of the general public,
by contrast, said their confidence in Bush had been
shaken some or a lot, found the poll, conducted July
11-20.
The new study comes amid growing concern
over the rising costs - in both US money and the lives
of its soldiers - of the occupation of Iraq. Eleven US
servicemen have been killed in just the past five days -
since Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed - bringing
the total number of US soldiers to die in combat since
Bush declared an end to major military operations May 1
to 50, and 163 killed since the war began, 16 more than
in the 1991 Gulf War.
A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup
poll released on Tuesday found continued general support
for the US effort in Iraq. Thirty-seven percent of
respondents said the United States should remain in
Iraq, regardless of the toll on US troops. Twenty-six
percent said the country's forces should withdraw from
Iraq now and 33 percent that Washington should withdraw
"if the number of US troops killed becomes too high".
Twelve percent defined "too high" as 200, while another
10 percent defined it as 500.
Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq
war, found himself almost continuously on the defensive
during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on Tuesday. Both Democrats and Republicans
questioned his assessment of the situation in Iraq, with
several lawmakers pointedly raising questions about his
judgment and credibility.
Noting that Wolfowitz
had championed overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime in
Baghdad long before September 11, Republican Senator
Lincoln Chafee said he "really resent[ed]" Wolfowitz's
insistence that the terrorist attacks persuaded him of
the necessity for going to war. "That's just not true,"
Chafee said. "You've been advocating for regime change
all through the late 90s."
Democratic Senator
Russell Feingold also took Wolfowitz to task over his
testimony that "the battle to secure the peace in Iraq
is now the central battle in the global war on
terror". Noting that the administration's pre-war
assertions of a link between Hussein and al-Qaeda were
based on what Wolfowitz admitted last weekend was "murky
intelligence" and have not been substantiated, Feingold
said it '"sounds as if we basically walked through the
looking glass here".
Almost all of the
questioners, including the Republican chairman of the
Committee, Senator Richard Lugar, also argued that the
administration was not doing enough to persuade other
countries to share the peacekeeping and financial burden
now being borne almost exclusively by Washington in
post-war Iraq, even at the cost of giving up some
control.
Both the costs of the occupation and
the administration's credibility were what were fueling
dissatisfaction with the administration among swing
voters, according to the PIPA report.
The
credibility findings were particularly remarkable. Swing
voters were found to be far more likely than members of
the general public (42 versus 27 percent) to say that
when Bush presented evidence that Iraq sought to buy
uranium in Africa, he was knowingly presenting false
evidence.
Independents also considered the
process of rebuilding Iraq to be going more poorly than
the general public. Seventy-two percent of independents
said the operation was not going very well (49 percent)
or not at all well (23 percent), compared to 57 percent
of the general public.
Nonetheless, swing voters
were generally more determined to see through the US
mission. While 72 percent of the general public said
Washington had a "responsibility to remain in Iraq as
long as necessary until there is a stable government",
82 percent of independents espoused that position.
(Inter Press Service)
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