Cognitive dissonance: Although the Bushites — all of ’em — link the War On Iraq to the War On Terror virtually every time one of them speaks, the ploy hasn’t completely brainwashed Americans. Today’s National Journals PollTrack finds most Americans can hold differing opinions about the two wars in their brains simultaneously.
The war on terrorism and the war in Iraq have become intertwined in the minds of many Americans, but more than three-quarters of respondents told Quinnipiac University pollsters that the United States should continue the war on terrorism — regardless of their feelings on the Gulf conflict.
Those feelings don’t seem too sunny. Fifty-four percent said they thought going to war with Iraq was the wrong thing to do, 13 points higher than the number who deemed the decision correct and 3 points more than Quinnipiac’s March survey.
Consistent with a recent Time/SRBI survey, a small plurality of Quinnipiac respondents said that before going to war, the Bush administration deliberately misled the public (49%) rather than telling “what it believed to be true” (46%).
Half of respondents to a new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey saw some light through the clouds, saying they thought the United States was making progress in Iraq. Forty-three percent said it was losing ground.But most of those respondents said the war wasn’t worth its costs. Fifty-seven percent said it hasn’t been worth the toll “of U.S. lives and dollars”; 36% said it has. Half also said the war has made Americans less secure.
Four in 10 Quinnipiac respondents — a plurality — said they favored an immediate withdrawal from the country. Thirty-four percent were on the opposite end of the spectrum, saying they didn’t want to set a pullout deadline at all; the rest of the respondents were sprinkled between withdrawal timetables from six months to three years.
The Iraq war also topped respondents’ list of overarching concerns. Thirty-one percent said the conflict was the most important problem facing the country.
Economic concerns came in second, with 16% deeming it the nation’s biggest problem. (Only slightly more than a third of today’s ABC News/Washington Post poll respondents rated the economy positively, but the analysis notes that consumer confidence has bounced back from its post-Katrina lows and has almost risen to the year’s average.
