Is the bottom dropping out?

Mark Wilson/AFP/Getty Images Just yesterday, in a speech hammering congressional Democrats over setting a timeline for a withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Bush said: The consequences of failure would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America. To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists.” But buried in ...

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602536_070417_bush_05.jpg

Mark Wilson/AFP/Getty Images

Mark Wilson/AFP/Getty Images

Just yesterday, in a speech hammering congressional Democrats over setting a timeline for a withdrawal of U.S. troops, President Bush said:

The consequences of failure would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America. To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists.”

But buried in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 U.S. adults is a finding that spells trouble for a U.S. administration that, from the beginning, has linked success in the Iraq War to victory in the war on terror.

When asked if they thought “the United States must win the war in Iraq in order for the broader war on terrorism to be a success,” only 37 percent of those surveyed agreed, while 57 percent said that “the war on terrorism can be a success without the United States winning the war in Iraq.” Back in January, 45 percent of respondents viewed the Iraq war as a must-win, whereas only 47 percent thought the United States could win the war on terror without victory in Iraq. 

With the caveat that the poll oversamples African Americans (who tend to oppose the Iraq War), it seems that—three months after President Bush announced he was sending more troops to Iraq—the bottom is dropping out of public support for the war in Iraq. Whatever the results on the ground, the surge has clearly backfired at home.

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