Majority Of Polled Americans Say Stay The Course In Iraq

For those of you who like polls…

WASHINGTON - A solid majority of Americans oppose immediately pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, citing as a main reason the desire to finish the job of stabilizing the country, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Some 57 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. military should stay until Iraq is stabilized, while 36 percent favor an immediate troop withdrawal. A year ago, 71 percent of respondents favored keeping troops in Iraq until it was stabilized.

That's a big drop from a year ago, but such a drop isn't very surprising given our nation's short attention span and the constant blitz of negative media attention Iraq gets. Which is exactly leaders can't govern based on polls. President Bush was elected by a majority of Americans partly on his "stay the course" platform for Iraq. He should stick to that. Its what we put him in office to do.

It will also be interesting to see what happens in the polling on Iraq (and Bush's approval numbers) now after the election. I would expect to see a jump. I also think we'll see a general upward trend as it sinks in that the only thing we have left to do in Iraq is to train the Iraqi security forces. Still a challenging task, to be sure, but its clear that we're on the homeward stretch. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and when Americans begin to see it a lot of them are going to recognize that President Bush had it mostly right all along.

You can read more from Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com