Partial results of a new poll commissioned by the Coalition are leaked
in
this Knight Ridder article. They indicate that most Iraqis now want
U.S.
troops to leave. A year ago, only 17% felt that way. Sixteen hundred
Iraqi
adults in seven cities were polled in mid-April (before the abuse
scandal
broke, no doubt accentuating this sentiment). -- Another surprise:
Moqtada
al-Sadr is the second most respected person in Iraq....

This article also reports that on Saturday, a diverse
group 2,000 Iraqi intellectuals and activists met at a Baghdad hotel to
form
an anti-American political bloc. They rejected the legitimacy of the
ironically named Governing Council, saying that its members arrived in
Iraq
"on American tanks," and took the position that even civil war was
preferable
to the present situation. --Mark Jensen [United for Peace of Pierce
County, Washington]

IRAQIS' DOUBTS OF U.S. DEEPEN

By Hannah Allam

** New poll says majority wants Americans gone **

Knight Ridder Newspapers

May 10, 2004

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/nation/8623441.htm

BAGHDAD -- Sadoun Dulame read the results of his latest poll again and
again.
He added up percentages, highlighted sections and scribbled notes in the

margins.

No matter how he crunched the numbers, however, he found himself in the
uncomfortable position this week of having to tell occupation
authorities that
the report they commissioned paints the bleakest picture yet of the
U.S.-led
coalition's reputation in Iraq. For the first time, according to
Dulame's
poll, a majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military
withdrew immediately.

A year ago, just 17 percent of Iraqis wanted the troops gone, according
to
Dulame's respected research center in Baghdad. Now, the disturbing new
results mirror what most Iraqis and many international observers have
said for
months: Give it up. Go home. This just isn't working.

The prisoner-abuse scandal is only the latest in a string of serious
setbacks
to the U.S. administration's ambitions for democracy in Iraq. Before
that,
one essential political ally was lost -- the country's Shiite Muslim
majority
-- and another discredited -- Ahmed Chalabi and other members of the
U.S.-appointed governing council.

A persistent guerrilla campaign is sending dozens of U.S. troops home in

flag-draped coffins, and more than half the country is unemployed.
Rebuilding
projects the coalition started and then abandoned because the worsening
security drove away contractors only add to the country's dismal
landscape and
dim hopes for the future.

There's little to suggest conditions will improve, at least not before
the
scheduled June 30 hand-over of limited authority to Iraqis. The
unraveling
occupation has failed to provide security, overhaul the economy, quell
ethnic
tension or introduce a legitimate government in the year it's been in
power.

Still, American officials give confident, optimistic assessments of the
situation from Baghdad. "The area of operations remains stable" goes
the
opening line to almost every news conference, regardless of whether
militiamen
have captured government buildings in the south or another morning car
bomb
has jarred the capital awake.

L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, has yet
to
announce an interim Iraqi government to attempt to rule until the
country is
stable enough for elections. Bremer has said the June 30 transfer of
sovereignty is on track, despite an announcement last week that the
number of
U.S. troops in Iraq probably will remain at 135,000 even after a
supposedly
independent Iraqi government is elected next year.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said at a recent appearance in
Denmark
that the next Iraqi government would decide to keep U.S. troops in
place.

"Obviously, because a large foreign military presence will still be
required,
under U.S. command, some would say, well, then you are not giving full
sovereignty," Powell said. "But we are giving sovereignty, so that
sovereignty can be used to say: 'We invite you to remain. It is a
sovereign
decision."'

Outside of officialdom, there is little appetite for allowing Americans
to
stay. Anyone still talking about liberation is shushed as disingenuous,

especially now that the image of a Saddam Hussein statue crashing to the

ground is no longer symbolic of the coalition's intentions. Instead,
many
Iraqis said, today's American presence is best summed up in photos of a
laughing female American soldier leading a nude Iraqi prisoner by a dog
leash.

Dulame's grim poll doesn't even take in the prisoner scandal's effects.
It
was conducted in mid-April in seven Iraqi cities. A total of 1,600
people
were interviewed, and the margin of error is 3 percentage points. The
findings, which must go first to coalition authorities, have not yet
been made
public.

According to Dulame, director of the independent Iraq Center for
Research and
Strategic Studies, prisoner abuse and other coalition missteps now are
fueling
a dangerous blend of Islamism and tribalism. For example, while
American
officials insist that only fringe elements support the radical Shiite
cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr, a majority of Iraqis crossed ethnic and sectarian lines
to
name him the second most-respected man in Iraq, according to the
coalition-funded poll.

"I don't know why the (Coalition Provisional Authority) continues in
these
misguided decisions," Dulame said last week. "But if they pack and
leave,
it's a disgrace for us as Iraqis and for them as Americans. Their
reputation
will be destroyed in the world, and we will be delivered to the
fanatics."

The coalition's options are dwindling. The Washington-based Center for
Strategic and International Studies, an independent think tank, released
a
study last week that found there is no other way to ease the mounting
turmoil
in Iraq "than to turn as much of the political, aid and security effort
over
to moderate Iraqis as soon as possible, and pray that the United Nations
can
create some kind of climate for political legitimacy."

Under the current conditions, however, any government installed by an
outside
entity will not be recognized as legitimate -- no matter how diverse it
promises to be. That reflects experience with the reigning governing
council,
at best a smart group of politicians whose visions for Iraq languished
under
American oversight. At worst, they are power-grabbing exiles who have
bowed
to American demands at the expense of their constituents' beliefs.

The council triumphantly rolled out a new flag while hundreds of Iraqis
were
dying in the U.S. siege of the flash-point city of Fallujah and in
pitched
battles with U.S. forces in a Shiite rebellion in the south.
Immediately, the
move drew criticism for both the insensitive timing and the pale-blue
color
reminiscent of the Israeli flag.

Doubts about the governing council's competence and legitimacy
resurfaced
Saturday when about 2,000 of Iraq's top scholars and activists gathered
at the
Babylon Hotel in Baghdad to form an anti-American political bloc. A
highly
diverse crowd of Islamists, Christians, secular nationalists, Baathists
and
communists listened as speakers demanded an immediate withdrawal of
American
forces and the dismantling of the governing council, whose members rode
into
Iraq "on American tanks." Even the prospect of civil war sounded better
to
them than a prolonged occupation.

"We'd like the Americans to go, even if that means a sectarian war,"
Ahmed
al-Baghdadi, a Shiite cleric, told the cheering crowd. "It would be a
war
among our boys, and old guys like us would be able to settle it
quickly."

Others take the prospect of a civil war much more seriously. While the
coalition is busy with insurgents in Fallujah and al-Sadr's forces in
the
south, Kurdish parties in the north are inflaming rivals Arab and
Turkmen by
angling for more and more power. In most northern cities, they've taken
over
the police forces, city councils and oil fields. Arabs passing through
northern areas report increased harassment from Kurdish authorities and
their
peshmerga militia.

As the most pro-American group in Iraq, Kurds face more attacks to go
with
their growing influence. Last week alone, a car bomb exploded at a
Kurdish
office north of Baghdad, and a Kurdish agriculture department official
was
assassinated in Kirkuk.

Iraqi scholars say the coalition increased ethnic tension by rolling out
early
political plans that treated Iraq as a monolithic nation. American
officials,
they said, came without even a working knowledge of age-old ethnic and
sectarian rivalries.

Some observers have likened the embattled U.S. campaign in Iraq to a
culture
clash of colossal proportions. A major shift in strategy now, they
said, is
probably too little, too late.

"The Americans have to understand -- we are a country with more than
10,000
years of history," said Hadi K. Attar, an Iraqi economist visiting
Baghdad
this month after 24 years of exile in Britain. "We are many communities
all
in one. This is not Afghanistan. This is Iraq."