Americans Support The Troops, But Not The War

This won't come as much of a surprise to anyone outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but a CBS News poll released yesterday shows that, while the American people may support the troops, they do not want them in Iraq.

The poll, conducted nationwide October 3-5, shows that 55 percent of Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq entirely, while 64 percent said that the war has not been worth its costs. America's view of how the war effort has been going is also getting gloomier by the month, with 55 percent thinking the war is going badly for the United States.


To me, the most telling sign in this poll is the fact that, while Americans say they support the troops themselves, national patience with spending money on the war is waning.

Most poll respondents are willing to cut spending in Iraq to pay for rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, and 66 percent no longer think it is acceptable to keep going into debt to pay for the war.

Which translates into one thing: Get the troops the hell out of there.

The Pentagon seems to have had a hard enough time supplying the troops adequately with a massive amount of popular support for the war. With public support for financing the war diminishing so quickly, leaving troops in Iraq only places them in greater danger every day.