What the Iraqi People Want

Undernews- 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. . . Mark Tessler and Mansoor Moaddel recently released some of the data from their latest survey of Iraqi public opinion. As reported in US News, this survey revealed that:

"The growing sense of insecurity affected all three of Iraq's major ethnic and religious groups. The number of Iraqis who 'strongly agreed' that life is 'unpredictable and dangerous' jumped from 41% to 48% of Shiites, from 67% to 79% of Sunnis, and from 16% to 50% of Kurds. The most recent survey, done in April this year, also asked for 'the three main reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.' Less than 2% chose 'to bring democracy to Iraq' as their first choice. The list was topped by 'to control Iraqi oil' (76%), followed by 'to build military bases' (41%) and 'to help Israel' (32%)."

The survey also asked a direct question about the presence of American troops in Iraq…91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops in the country, up from 74.4% in 2004. 84.5% are "strongly opposed". . .

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.