Poll: 90 percent support right to protest war

37 percent back Bush's handling
The poll found that 37 percent approve of the way the Bush administration is conducting the war. Three-fourths of Republicans and only 15 percent of Democrats in the poll approve.

Support for Bush’s handling of the war was stronger among those who know someone who has served in Iraq — almost half — compared with about a quarter of those who don’t know someone who served in Iraq.

More than half of those polled, 53 percent, say the United States made a mistake in going to war in Iraq. That level of opposition is about the same as the number who said that about Vietnam in August 1968, six months after the Tet offensive — the massive North Vietnamese attack on South Vietnamese cities that helped turn U.S. opinion against that war. Various polls have shown that erosion of war support has been faster in Iraq than during the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

“Our attention span is simply shorter,” said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Our willingness to put up with a difficult military situation and losses isn’t what it used to be.”

With anti-war protesters getting increased attention, the president has been defending his war policies in speeches in Utah and Idaho, warning that an early withdrawal from Iraq would hurt the United States.

While disagreeing with Sheehan’s call to pull troops out of Iraq, Bush said, “I strongly support her right to protest.”

‘Hang in there’ attitude
A solid majority of the public agrees with Bush’s stance on staying in Iraq. Six in 10 in the poll support keeping troops in Iraq until it is stabilized rather than pulling them out now.

Robin Brown, a Republican from Douglasville, Ga., says the U.S. troops will eventually achieve their mission “if people will hang in there with them.”

Iraqi political leaders have been struggling to reach agreement on a constitution that would be acceptable to Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Vivian Snyder, a Republican from Staten Island, N.Y., said she disagreed with the decision to invade Iraq, but doesn’t want troops to leave yet. “Otherwise, it’s all for nothing.”

The poll of 1,001 adults was conducted Aug. 22-24 by Ipsos, an international polling firm, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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