http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/08/what_the_iraqi_.html
"what the Iraqi people want"
In yesterday's press conference, President Bush insisted that there
would be no withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as long as he was
president. He gave a long, scattered list of reasons. Among them was
a claim put forward in a number of different ways that boiled down to
this: "it's what the Iraqi people want."
Really?
Mark Tessler and Mansoor Moaddel recently released some of the data
from their latest survey of Iraqi public opinion.
http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2006/Jun06/r061406a
<snip>
The survey also asked a direct question about the presence of American
troops in Iraq (which for some reason was not included either in
Kaplan's story or in the University of Michigan press release).
Tessler kindly provided me with a short write-up of the data,
forthcoming in the TAARI Newsletter. Here is Table 3, responses to
the question "Do you support or oppose the presence of coalition
forces in Iraq?"
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2006/08/what_the_iraqi_.html
The bottom line: 91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition
troops in the country, up from 74.4% in 2004. 84.5% are "strongly
opposed". Among Sunnis, opposition to the US presence went from 94.5%
to 97.9% (97.2% "strongly opposed"). Among Shia, opposition to the
US presence went from 81.2% to 94.6%, with "strongly opposed" going
from 63.5% to 89.7%. Even among the Kurds, opposition went from 19.6%
to 63.3%. In other words, it isn't just that Iraqis oppose the
American presence - it's that their feelings are intense: only 7.2%
"somewhat oppose" and 4.7% "somewhat support."
Maybe there are reasons for keeping American troops in Iraq, but "it's
what the Iraqi people want" really doesn't seem to be one of them.