{"article":{"id":97019,"heading":"Support for Bush, war going back up","author":" Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY","created":"2003-12-12 13:25:48","modified":"2003-12-12 18:49:25","last_modified":"Sat, 13 Dec 2003 01:49:25","article":"

WASHINGTON ? Public support for the war in Iraq, on the downswing since establishing the peace there turned messy, has climbed back to its highest level since August, a USA TODAY\/CNN\/Gallup Poll shows. (Related link: Poll results)

Political analysts suggest the positive impact from President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving Day trip to Iraq and a relatively low level of U.S. deaths over the past two weeks might be driving the rise. But they note that injuries to 61 U.S. soldiers Tuesday by two suicide bombers in Iraq might trigger reassessments.

\"Thanksgiving looked like a happy reunion. The latest bombings jolt people back to reality,\" Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said.

Six in 10 approved of the decision to go to war and a similar six in 10 said the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over. Those are the highest levels of support since August, when attacks against U.S. troops began escalating and public support started to decline.

The poll was taken last weekend, little more than a week after the president's trip to Iraq, where he was cheered by troops and received extensive coverage in the news media. In the aftermath, the growing clamor to remove U.S. troops from Iraq has subsided. The poll found that 42% favored withdrawing some or all troops, the lowest level since a high of 57% favored withdrawals in October.

At the same time, Bush's overall job-approval rating rose to 55% from a pre-Thanksgiving 50%, which was equal to the lowest in his presidency.

\"The Thanksgiving trip had a powerful effect,\" said Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. \"Seeing the troops' reaction to the president reminded Americans of their commitment and might have encouraged them to support him.\"

Bush also gained a slight nudge upward in his prospects for re-election. Overall, 48% of registered voters said they are likely to vote for him next year, and 41% said they will vote for an unnamed Democratic candidate. In late October, 46% preferred Bush to 43% for the anonymous Democrat.

Mark Rozell, a political scientist at Catholic University of America in Washington, said Democrats who criticized the president's Thanksgiving trip as a political stunt might have created a sympathy backlash. \"Some people might be rallying around the president in a difficult time,\" he said.

Rozell added, however, that the gain would be only temporary unless the Iraq situation shows steady improvement.

In the poll, 79% of Americans said Bush's trip to Iraq was a good idea. Even two of three Democrats polled said it was a good idea. Also, 54% said Bush did it to show support for the troops, while 37% said he did it to gain political points.

But regardless of the rise in support, confidence that Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction will be found continues to slip, as does confidence that attacks on U.S. troops can be stopped.

\"People are getting used to the idea that this is going to be a long, hard slog,\" Bowman said. <\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"WASHINGTON ? Public support for the war in Iraq, on the downswing since establishing the peace there turned messy, has climbed back to its highest level since August, a USA TODAY\/CNN\/Gallup Poll shows. (Related link: Poll results)","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/12\/97019.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":97039,"heading":"About Gallup poll","article":"1- From Lobster: parapolitics and state research journal http:\/\/www.lobster-magazine.co.uk\r\n\r\nGeorge Gallup, chairman of the polling organisation is members of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP for short) - an elite transatlantic network launched in 1985 with $425,000 from a Philadelphia-based trust with a long record in the US of supporting right-wing causes.\r\n\r\nThe British American Project is nothing more than a Council on Foreign Relations\/Royal Institute of Internal Affairs, sponsored study-group, meant to generate material for creating covert strategic, and tactical psycho-political operations for influencing public opinion to allow CFR\/RIIA industries to maximize their profits at the expense of the public at large, and to further the CFR\/RIIA goal of forming one world government run by CFR\/RIIA members.\r\n\r\nLobster -- a journal of intelligence, parapolitics, and state research since 1983 (2 issues per year; write them for prices and back list)\r\n\r\n1- From the book :\u201dCONSPIRATORS' HIERARCHY: THE STORY OF THE COMMITTEE OF 300\u201d\r\n\r\nby Dr. John Coleman (ex- MI6\u2013British Secret service)\r\n\r\nRESEARCH ANALYSlS CORPORATION.\r\nThis is HUMRRO'S sister "1984" organization situated in McLean, Virginia. Established in 1948, it was taken-over by the Committee of 3OO in 1961 when it became part of the Johns Hopkins bloc. It has worked on over 600 projects, including integrating Negroes into the Army, the tactical use of nuclear-weapons, psychological-warfare-programs and mass-population-control.\r\n \r\nObviously there are many more major think-tanks, and we shall come to most of them in this book. One of the most important areas of cooperation between what think-tanks turn out and what becomes government and public policy are the "pollsters." It is the job of the polling-companies to mold and shape public-opinion in the way that suits the conspirators. Polls are constantly being taken by CBS-NBC-ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post. Most of these efforts are coordinated at the National-Opinion Research-Center where, as much as it will amaze most of us, a psychological-profile was developed for the entire nation.\r\n \r\nFindings are fed into the computers of Gallup Poll and Yankelovich, Skelley and White for comparative-evaluation. Much of what we read in our newspapers or see on television has first been cleared by the polling-companies. WHAT WE SEE IS WHAT THE POLLSTERS THINK WE SHOULD SEE. This is called "public-opinion-making." The whole idea behind this bit of social-conditioning is to find out how responsive the public is to POLICY-DIRECTIVES handed down by the Committee of 300. We are called "targeted population groups" and what is measured by the pollsters is how much resistance is generated to what appears in the "Nightly News." Later, we shall learn exactly how this deceptive practice got started and who is responsible for it.\r\n \r\nIt is all part of the elaborate opinion-making-process created at, Tavistock. Today our people believe they are well-informed but what they do not realize is that the opinions they believe are their own, were in fact created in the research-institutions and think-tanks of America and that none of us are free to form our own opinions, because of the information we are provided with by the media and the pollsters.\r\n","author":"Blue key","parent_id":97019,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-12-12 18:49:25","modified":"2013-11-11 00:27:59","fileurl":""}]}