http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

 

Released: February 28, 2006

 

U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006

 

* Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay ?as long as they are needed?

* While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy

* Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown

* Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam?s role in 9/11, most don?t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks

* Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation

* Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment

 

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

 

The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College?s Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq ?immediately,? while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay ?as long as they are needed.?

 

Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.

 

The troops have drawn different conclusions about fellow citizens back home. Asked why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, 37% of troops serving there said those Americans are unpatriotic, while 20% believe people back home don?t believe a continued occupation will work. Another 16% said they believe those favoring a quick withdrawal do so because they oppose the use of the military in a pre-emptive war, while 15% said they do not believe those Americans understand the need for the U.S. troops in Iraq.

 

The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly ?to retaliate for Saddam?s role in the 9-11 attacks,? 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was ?to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.?

 

?Ninety-three percent said that removing weapons of mass destruction is not a reason for U.S. troops being there,? said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. ?Instead, that initial rationale went by the wayside and, in the minds of 68% of the troops, the real mission became to remove Saddam Hussein.? Just 24% said that ?establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a major reason for the war. Only small percentages see the mission there as securing oil supplies (11%) or to provide long-term bases for US troops in the region (6%).

 

The continuing insurgent attacks have not turned U.S. troops against the Iraqi population, the survey shows. More than 80% said they did not hold a negative view of Iraqis because of those attacks. About two in five see the insurgency as being comprised of discontented Sunnis with very few non-Iraqi helpers. ?There appears to be confusion on this,? Zogby said. But, he noted, less than a third think that if non-Iraqi terrorists could be prevented from crossing the border into Iraq, the insurgency would end. A majority of troops (53%) said the U.S. should double both the number of troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.

 

The survey shows that most U.S. military personnel in-country have a clear sense of right and wrong when it comes to using banned weapons against the enemy, and in interrogation of prisoners. Four in five said they oppose the use of such internationally banned weapons as napalm and white phosphorous. And, even as more photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq surface around the world, 55% said it is not appropriate or standard military conduct to use harsh and threatening methods against insurgent prisoners in order to gain information of military value.

 

Three quarters of the troops had served multiple tours and had a longer exposure to the conflict: 26% were on their first tour of duty, 45% were on their second tour, and 29% were in Iraq for a third time or more.

 

A majority of the troops serving in Iraq said they were satisfied with the war provisions from Washington. Just 30% of troops said they think the Department of Defense has failed to provide adequate troop protections, such as body armor, munitions, and armor plating for vehicles like HumVees. Only 35% said basic civil infrastructure in Iraq, including roads, electricity, water service, and health care, has not improved over the past year. Three of every four were male respondents, with 63% under the age of 30.

 

The survey included 944 military respondents interviewed at several undisclosed locations throughout Iraq. The names of the specific locations and specific personnel who conducted the survey are being withheld for security purposes. Surveys were conducted face-to-face using random sampling techniques. The margin of error for the survey, conducted Jan. 18 through Feb. 14, 2006, is +/- 3.3 percentage points.

 

(2/28/2006)

Can ya' blame 'em?

Nope

but....

 

 

but....

 

 

 

oh nevermind.

I can't believe that over 90% thought that this war was the result of Saddam's "role" in 9/11. Clearly some people are far too easily swayed.

I can't believe that over 90% thought that this war was the result of Saddam's "role" in 9/11. Clearly some people are far too easily swayed.

 

 

Why do you think recruiters always go after the lowest rung of the social ladder first? I'm not hating, but they don't have the resources or the education, so in comes Army with this sweet deal...

I can't believe that over 90% thought that this war was the result of Saddam's "role" in 9/11. Clearly some people are far too easily swayed.

 

 

Yep, everybody but you... :whistle

Cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

Cowards cut and run, Marines never do.

 

58% of them want to. :lol

These poll results aren't shocking at all.

 

There's this famous picture floating around of an army reservist in a humvee driving down some Iraqi highway holding up a piece of cardboard with "One weekend a month MY ASS" written on it :lol .

These poll results aren't shocking at all.

 

There's this famous picture floating around of an army reservist in a humvee driving down some Iraqi highway holding up a piece of cardboard with "One weekend a month MY ASS" written on it :lol .

 

 

thats what you get for not exactly reading the fine print.

 

 

that is afterall why i didnt join the reserves.

These poll results aren't shocking at all.

 

There's this famous picture floating around of an army reservist in a humvee driving down some Iraqi highway holding up a piece of cardboard with "One weekend a month MY ASS" written on it :lol .

 

 

thats what you get for not exactly reading the fine print.

 

 

that is afterall why i didnt join the reserves.

 

There are more than 1 million reservists and national guardsmen, less than 15% have ever been deployed to Iraq.

By Tim Kane

March 10, 2006

 

For anyone following the Iraq war, now may be the time to take off those rose-colored glasses. According to a recent Zogby poll, 72 percent of U.S. troops say it's time to withdraw from Iraq. Another stunner is that only three in five soldiers in Iraq have a clear sense of the mission. Ouch!

 

Despite the wide range of opinions and loud voices about America's role in Iraq, there's a real hunger for authenticity that only the troops on the ground can provide. As a veteran, I have been hoping that a pollster would take the obvious step of asking our troops for their opinions, and I think Zogby International deserves credit for making the effort.

 

But as an economist, my appreciation eroded sharply when I took a closer look.

 

The survey contains 24 questions. It was given secretly during late January and early February to an unknown number of American troops serving in Iraq, although we are told that 944 respondents were included. If all the guidelines for random sampling were met (they weren't), the reported margin of error would be plus or minus 3.3 percent.

 

The unforgivable flaw in Zogby's survey is the biased phrasing of its questions and answers. Two of the most provocative results are based on questions with no middle ground. It's like a multiple-choice test with no right answers.

 

For example, the widespread finding that three in four soldiers think the United States should withdraw from Iraq within a year has only one option for troops who think otherwise: stay indefinitely. This infamous question asks, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?" But the first three answers are not phrased in terms of staying, they are phrased "withdraw...," "withdraw..." and "withdraw... ." Where are the options for troops who think the United States should stay for "one to two years" or "two to five years"? Zogby omits such nuance. It's stay or go. Now or never.

 

The smart troops who perceived this false choice probably set the clipboard down and walked away at that point. That leaves us with a biased respondent pool.

 

Another question asks for a description of "your understanding of the U.S. mission in Iraq." Two choices describe the mission as clear, and four choices describe it as unclear.

 

More damning, John Zogby himself misrepresented the phrasing of one of the questions in an op-ed. This may seem like nitpicking, but if half a man's family say they want "chicken" for dinner, and he reports those votes as "nonvegetarian," he is not exactly being honest. In just this way, the poll asked the soldiers to rate seven different "reasons for the Iraq invasion." It is a question about prewar justification, not the postwar occupation. Yet Zogby described their answers as a description of "the U.S. mission." If that's the question he wanted to ask, he should have asked it that way. Polling is a science. Words matter.

 

The biggest question we should all be asking Zogby is not about the questions that were included, but about those that weren't. Nowhere in the survey results do we see assessments of the U.S. mission. Has it been a success or a failure? How so? Nowhere do we see questions about morale, about progress in killing terrorists, about the state of the insurgency, about the prospects for democracy and economic growth in Iraq. There are questions aplenty on napalm, interrogation, and (I'm not kidding) doubling the number of bombing missions.

 

Did Zogby dare to ask anything that might result in good news?

 

Keep in mind that the men and women in uniform are limited by law from making political statements. If troops are given a chance to express themselves anonymously and fairly, that's great. They are probably the best barometer of how the mission is going, and how it can be improved. But this Zogby poll isn't a barometer. It is (a) biased, (b) dishonest, or © all of the above.

 

Don't like those options? Neither do I. But that's all they gave us.

 

I remain thankful that Zogby made this effort, and I hope they will try again in a manner that is (d) insightful, (e) comprehensive, and maybe even (f) irrefutably profound.

 

Tim Kane (Tim.Kane@heritage.org) is an economist and Bradley Fellow in the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, and a veteran Air Force officer.