New Iraq Poll: Ebbing Hope in a Landscape of Loss

Yesterday I wrote about a poll by a UK company (for customers unknown) which was spun by the London Times and then spun further by the American Right to uphold their narrative that there was no Iraqi civil war and Iraqis were optimistic that the "surge" would improve their lives. The actual figures, on closer examination, did not support that spin.

Today, there's a new poll. This time we know the customers - ABC NEws, USA Today, the BBC and ARD German TV. This one is going to be well-nigh impossible for the pro-war Right to spin. Here's the ABC report and here's the PDF of the full report. Unlike the poll being cited by the uber-right yesterday, this one didn't avoid the most problemmatic areas of Iraq. The poll was "conducted Feb. 25-March 5, 2007, through in-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqi adults, including oversamples in Anbar province, Basra City, Kirkuk and the Sadr City section of Baghdad."

ABC descibes the results thusly:

A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever starker sectarian chasm — and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed.

Some of the poll's key findings:

80% of Iraqis report attacks nearby — car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians.

53% of Iraqis have a close friend or relative who's been hurt or killed in the current violence. One in six says someone in their own household has been harmed.

In November 2005, 63% of Iraqis felt very safe in their neighborhoods. Today just 26% say the same. One in three doesn't feel safe at all. In Baghdad, home to a fifth of the country's population, that figure is to 84%.

In 2005, two-thirds expected their lives to improve over the coming year. Now just 35% are expect improvement.

"The number of Iraqis who call it "acceptable" to attack U.S. and coalition forces, 17 percent in early 2004, has tripled to 51 percent now, led by near unanimity among Sunni Arabs. And 78 percent of Iraqis now oppose the presence of U.S. forces on their soil, though far fewer favor an immediate pullout."

"for the first time since the 2003 war, fewer than half of Iraqis, 42 percent, say life is better now than it was under Saddam Hussein."

42% think their country is in a civil war; 24% more think one is likely. 63% of Sunnis think the civil war has already begun.

80% of Baghdad residents rate security in their local area negatively, compared with 47% in the rest of Iraq. Essentially no one in Baghdad counts himself or herself as “very safe,” vs. 32 percent elsewhere. 77% of Baghdad residents have had a friend or family member harmed in the current violence.

"the number of Iraqis who call it "acceptable" to attack U.S. or coalition forces has soared from 17 percent in early 2004 to 51 percent now." (94% of Sunnis, 35% of Shiites)

"Eighty-two percent of Iraqis say they're not confident in U.S. and U.K. forces — 88 percent of Shiites as well as 97 percent of Sunni Arabs."

"Nationwide, 67 percent of Iraqis say postwar reconstruction efforts in their area have been ineffective or nonexistent. Sixty percent of Shiites say so; among Sunnis, it's 94 percent."

There's more - lots more - at the links. None of it is happy-happy-joy-joy news for those who cheerlead Bush's midadventures. It's going to take me some time to wade through it all, then perhaps I will have some more to say. For now, though, I think the spin of yesterday just collided with some devastating reality.