Bush, GOP poll numbers reflect angst over Iraq war

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060901/COLUMNIST13/60901018/-1/NEWS15

POLL after public opinion poll on Iraq shows an indisputable shift in American attitudes toward the nearly four-year-old Bush war. It is striking how the approval and disapproval numbers have all but reversed themselves since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. Even FOX News, the unabashed Republican network, released polls with mood swings ominous for the GOP.

One of the latest gauges of how far the country has swung against the Bush war is evident in a Newsweek poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

The nationwide survey, done Aug. 24-25, asked respondents “… Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?” Of the 1,002 adults questioned, 63 percent disapproved, 31 percent approved, and 6 percent were unsure.

Compare those numbers with results taken May 1-2, 2003, that indicated 69 percent approving of the President’s actions in Iraq, and 26 percent disapproving. Now flash ahead to Aug. 17-21 and another poll conducted by CBS News and the New York Times that asked 1,206 participants the same question posed by the Princeton survey with similar results — disapproval 65 percent, approval 30 percent.

A glance at different polls done by different organizations at different times since the pre-emptive Iraq invasion reveals a gradual public transition from acceptance to angst. Americans have grown increasingly dismayed at how the Bush war is going thousands of deaths after the President deemed the mission accomplished.