45% Favor Congress Withholding Funds In Face Of Veto

Q: If George W. Bush vetoes the legislation, do you think Congress should pass another version of the bill that provides funding for the war without any conditions for troop withdrawal, or should Congress refuse to pass any funding bill until Bush agrees to accept conditions for withdrawal?

Fund the war without conditions: 43%
Withhold funding until Bush signs: 45%
Don't know: 12%

---

THE TIMES / BLOOMBERG POLL

Most say Gonzales should quit over fired prosecutors

An even larger percentage believe White House aides should testify about the matter under oath, poll finds.

By Doyle McManus
Times Staff Writer

7:28 PM PDT, April 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — Most Americans believe Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales should resign because of the controversy over his office's firing of federal prosecutors, and a big majority want White House aides to testify under oath about the issue, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll has found.

The survey, conducted Thursday through Monday, found that 53% said Gonzales should step down because he claimed he had no role in the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys last year — an account later contradicted by Justice Department documents and congressional testimony by his top assistant.

Senate and House Democratic leaders have asked White House aides to testify under oath about the firings, in part to answer questions about the roles of Gonzales and Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist. Bush has rejected those requests, but the poll found that 74% of the public believes his aides, including Rove, should comply.

Even among Republicans, 49% said they thought the aides should testify; 43% said they should not.

"I don't know whether Gonzales needs to resign; I think he's going to have to seriously think about it," said David Brennan, 43, a poll respondent who is a telephone technician in Bend, Ore., and described himself as a conservative Republican. "But I do think, no matter what, [the aides] should have to speak about it under oath. They should tell the truth, Republican or Democrat."

Respondents were divided along party lines as to whether Gonzales should resign. Among Democrats, 68% said he should do so; among Republicans, 33% said he should depart.

Independents tip the balance — 57% said they supported calls for his resignation, while 22% said they thought he should stay.

On another issue, the poll found that Americans are also split along partisan lines over pending congressional legislation that would provide new funding for the war in Iraq, but require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from the country.

Asked whether Bush should accept or veto a bill that included a timetable, 48% said he should sign such a measure while 43% said he should reject it. A significant majority of Democrats — 74% — backed signing the bill; an even bigger majority of Republicans, 80%, supported a veto.

Bush has pledged to veto a war funding bill if Congress sends it to him with withdrawal language.

If the president carries out his promise, Democratic voters do not want the party's legislators in Washington to reach an accord with him.

Some Democratic congressional leaders have conceded that that they almost assuredly cannot get the two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate needed to override a veto. So they would then face a choice between approving the war funding bill without a timetable or blocking the money — and come under withering criticism from Bush for failing to support U.S. troops on the battlefield.

Given that choice, 66% of Democrats want Congress to hold firm and withhold the funding unless Bush accepts some conditions for a troop withdrawal.

Among Republicans, 73% say they want Congress to fund the war without conditions.

One implication of those numbers is that a Democrat who acknowledges that ultimately the party will accede to Bush is likely to face attacks from the party's antiwar wing — as happened to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) two weeks ago when he predicted that Congress would eventually pass the funding without stringent conditions.

The Times/Bloomberg poll interviewed 1,373 respondents by telephone nationwide under the supervision of poll Director Susan Pinkus. The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The poll found that Americans have grown more pessimistic since the beginning of the year.

About two-thirds, 66%, said they believed the country is "seriously off on the wrong track," up from 61% in a Times/Bloomberg Poll in January.

Bush received a positive job approval rating from 36% of those interviewed, down from 39% in January (and well below a 45% approval rating he registered in a similar survey in September).

The Democratic-led Congress has seen its luster dim.

In a poll before November's election, only 30% of respondents said they approved of the job the Republican-led Congress was doing.

After Democrats had assumed control of the House and Senate, a poll in March found 41% approving of the job they were doing. In the new poll, 34% of respondents said they approved of the job Congress was doing.

"The honeymoon is definitely over," Pinkus said.

Sidney Spiegel, 87, a retired hydrogeologist in Littleton, Colo., who responded to the poll, said of the legislators: "They're holding investigations, but they aren't taking care of things they should have fixed years ago, like Social Security."

Asked whether the Democratic-led Congress has launched its current wave of investigations into conduct by the Bush administration out of genuine concern for government ethics or to gain political advantage, 63% of respondents said the aim was political.

One piece of encouraging news for Bush: a majority of respondents in both parties said they favor changes to immigration policy that combine tougher enforcement of existing laws with a program to provide temporary "guest worker" visas for undocumented workers.

A strong majority of respondents, 77%, said employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants should be punished. That included 87% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

Poll Backs Supoenas of Bush Aides

Poll Backs Supoenas of Bush Aides
"Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify." (USA Today)

Poll Backs Supoenas of Bush Aides

Poll Backs Supoenas of Bush Aides
"Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify." (USA Today)

Americans Believe Iran Arming Iraqis, but Oppose Attack

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research

Americans Reject Attacking Iran Over Iraq Bombs

March 27, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Many adults in the United States believe their country should not become involved in a military conflict with Iran, according to a poll by Harris Interactive. 50 per cent of respondents are opposed to bombing Iran if it is proven that the Islamic country is helping the Shiites in Iraq.

After being branded as part of an "axis of evil" by United States president George W. Bush in January 2002, Iran has contended that its nuclear program aims to produce energy, not weapons. In June 2005, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s presidential election in a run-off over Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with 61.6 per cent of all cast ballots.

On Feb. 11, U.S. military officials accused the Iranian government of providing roadside bombs to Iraqi militants. 59 per cent of respondents believe Iran is indeed helping the Shiites in Iraq by providing weapons to them.

On Feb. 27, U.S. Army officers displayed C-4 plastic explosives—recovered during a raid in Iraq’s Diyala province—and claimed they were manufactured in Iran. Officer Jeremy Siegrist declared: "I don’t think there’s any way for us to know if it’s tied to any government. That’s a stretch too far."

Polling Data

If it is proven that Iran is helping the Shiites in Iraq, would you favour or oppose bombing Iran because of this?

Strongly favour bombing Iran	14%
Somewhat favour bombing Iran	18%
Somewhat oppose bombing Iran	19%
Strongly oppose bombing Iran	31%
Not sure	8%

Do you believe that Iran is helping the Shiites in Iraq by providing weapons to them?

Yes	59%
No	10%
Not sure	31%

Source: Harris Interactive
Methodology: Online interviews with 2,223 American adults, conducted from Mar. 6 to Mar. 14, 2007. Margin of error is 2 per cent.

Americans Say Defense Spending Too High

America Speaks Out

Is the United States spending too much on defense?

by Carl Conetta
Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #41
26 March 2007

On 1-4 February 2007, the Gallup polling organization asked a representative sample of US citizens if they thought the United States was spending too little, too much, or just the right amount on defense and the military.¹ For the first time since the mid-1990s, a plurality of Americans said that the country was spending too much. The surprising result of the survey shows current public attitudes to approximate those that prevailed in March 1993, shortly after former President Bill Clinton took office. Today, 43 percent of Americans say that the country is spending "too much" on the military, while 20 percent say "too little". In 1993, the balance of opinion was 42 percent saying "too much" and 17 percent saying "too little."

What makes this result especially surprising is that few leaders in Congress and no one in the administration today argues that the United States can or should reduce military spending. Quite the contrary: leaders of both parties seem eager to add to the Pentagon's coffers, even as public anti-war sentiment builds. And Congress is not the only institution that appears insensitive to the shift in public opinion. The Gallup survey also drew little attention from the news media. Indeed, a Lexis-Nexis database search shows almost no coverage of the poll, which was released on 02 March 2007.

US military spending in comparative perspective

For FY 2008, the Bush administration has requested $647.3 billion to cover the costs of national defense and war. This includes the Defense Department budget ($483 billion), some smaller defense-related accounts ($22.6 billion), and the projected FY 2008 cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and counter-terror operations ($141.7 billion). However, it does not include non-DOD expenditures for homeland security ($36.4 billion) or the Veterans' Affairs budget ($84.4 billion). Nor does it include the request for supplemental funds for outstanding FY 2007 war costs ($93.4 billion).

The $647.3 billion request represents a 75 percent real increase over the post-Cold War low-point in national defense spending, which occurred in 1996. Today's expenditures are higher in inflation-adjusted terms than peak spending during the Vietnam and Korean wars -- as well as higher than during the Reagan buildup.²

One way of appreciating the significance of this change is to view it in terms of world military spending. Whereas the United States accounted for 28 percent of world defense expenditures in 1986 and 34 percent in 1994, it today accounts for approximately 50 percent.

The authoritative reference work on military comparisons, The Military Balance 2007, estimates world military expenditure in 2005 to have been approximately $1.2 trillion. A plausible estimate for current world spending is $1.35 trillion. By contrast, the armaments and disarmament yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates 2005 world expenditure to have been slightly more than $1 trillion. The estimates differ in large part because the two data books rely on different standards of comparison: The Military Balance relies more heavily on "purchasing power parity" (or PPP) when comparing nations' expenditures, while the SIPRI volume uses exchange rates.³

The change in America's proportion of world military expenditure is due partly to the resurgence in US spending that began after 1998, and partly to reduced spending by other nations. Significantly, the greatest average decline in spending has occurred in that group of nations that the United States might consider "adversaries" or "potential adversaries". China, for one, is spending much more than it did prior to 1990 -- but "adversary spending" as a whole has receded substantially.

Spending versus strength

The turn in US public attitudes may reflect disenchantment with the Iraq war or a general sense that increased military spending is not bringing increased security. Clearly, the flood of defense dollars has not purchased stability in either Iraq or Afghanistan, nor has it led to a general decrease in terrorist activity. Indeed, the rate of terrorist incidents and fatalities has increased significantly since the onset of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars -- even if one discounts terrorist activity occurring in these two countries.⁴

Relevant to threat perception: the February 2007 Gallup poll shows that the proportion of Americans thinking that the country is "not strong enough" remains high: 46 percent. Only eight percent think the country is stronger then it needs to be. Comparable figures for 1993 are not available, but in 1990 public sentiments about spending and strength correlated much more closely. At that time 9 percent thought that the United States was spending too little and 16 percent thought it was spending too much. Regarding "strength": 16 percent in 1990 thought the country was stronger than necessary, while 17 percent thought it was not as strong as it needed to be. In the recent poll, by contrast, the public leans toward seeing spending as too high and strength as too little.

Clearly (and understandably) the American public continues to perceive a high-level of threat, even as it has begun questioning the current level of military expenditure. The unusual disjuncture between sentiments about "defense spending" and "strength" may reflect doubts about how the Pentagon is spending its funds or doubts about whether military dollars can purchase the requisite type of strength. Certainly, the Iraq and Afghanistan imbroglios suggest that the utility of America's military investments has distinct limits. This may create a basis of public support for political leaders attempting a more thorough security policy reform than they have been willing to contemplate so far.

Economic concerns

Economic concerns may also play a role in the public's thinking about defense spending. Although consumer confidence is higher in 2007 than it was in 2006, it still remains lower than during the mid- and late-1990s. In real terms, US median family income stagnated between 2000 and 2007, while personal debt rose. Now, rising interest rates are pinching the credit flow. Against this backdrop, the public may be taking a second look at the steep climb in military spending – up 45 percent in real terms between 2002 and 2008. Or perhaps the effect is more impressionistic: No matter how softly it is said, $647 billion sounds like a vast sum.

Currently the Pentagon plans to spend more than $2.75 trillion during the next five years -- not counting the incremental cost of future combat operations. This is not easily reconciled with bringing the national debt under control, while also meeting pending demands on social security and medicare. There also may be detrimental macro-economic effects associated with the scale of federal deficits and debt -- unless remedial action is taken. Concerns such as these recently led the World Economic Forum to lower America's competitiveness rating, dropping it from first place to sixth.⁵ Similar concerns have prompted the US Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office, David M. Walker, to launch a public information campaign about the long-term threat to the nation's fiscal health.⁶ Such concerns may not yet figure substantially in the public's thinking about defense expenditures -- but they are bound to play a bigger role as the "baby-boomer" generation begins to retire en masse.

Notes

1. Joseph Carroll, "Perceptions of "Too Much" Military Spending at 15-Year High," Gallup News Service, 02 March 2007; http://www.galluppoll.com/content/Default.aspx?ci=26761&pg=1&VERSION=p.

2. Steven M. Kosiak, Both DOD Base and War Budgets Receive Big Boosts; Total Funding at Highest Level since the End of World War II (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 5 February 2007); http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/U.20070205.Both_DoD_Base_and_/U.20070205.Both_DoD_Base_and_.pdf.

3. The Military Balance 2007 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2007); and, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2006: Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2006).

4. Carl Conetta, War & consequences: Global terrorism has increased since 9/11 attacks, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #38 (Cambridge MA: Commonwealth Institute, 25 September 2006); http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0609bm38.pdf.

5. Philip Thornton, "US slides down competition league; Concern over America's growing twin deficits," The Independent (London), 27 September 2006; http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060927/ai_n16745860.

6. Matt Crenson, "GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms," The Associated Press, 28 October 2006; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800420_pf.html

---

Citation: Carl Conetta, "America Speaks Out: Is the United States spending too much on defense?," Cambridge, MA: Commonwealth Institute Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #41, 26 March 2007. http://www.comw.org/pda/0703bm41.html

Republican Party loyalty in 'dramatic' decline

Republican Party loyalty in decline since 2002

By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer
12:31 PM PDT, March 22, 2007

Related
-	Pew Research Center for People and the Press

WASHINGTON -- Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged since the second year of George W. Bush's presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political dominance for more than a decade, a major new survey has found.

The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, while only 35% aligned with Republicans.

What's more, the survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down.

Those findings suggest that Republicans' political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush.

"Iraq has played a large part; the pushback on the Republican Party has to do with Bush, but there are other things going on here that Republicans will have to contend with," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. "There is a difference in the landscape."

A key question is whether those trends signal a broad and lasting change in the balance of power between the parties or just a mood swing that will soon pass or moderate. It remains to be seen whether Democrats can capitalize on Republicans' weakness and gain a durable position of political dominance.

"This is the beginning of a Democratic opportunity," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "The question is whether we blow it or not."

Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, said he believed the Pew poll exaggerates his party's problems and that the situation will improve as attention shifts to choosing Bush's successor.

"Once we have new nominees to redefine the Republican and Democratic party in 2008, then we will have a far more level playing field than we have today," Ayres said.

But other Republicans believe such poll results signal a clear end to the era of GOP domination that began with President Reagan's election, continued when the party took control of Capitol Hill in 1994, and helped elect Bush twice to the White House.

"There are cycles in history where one party or one movement ascends for a while and then it sews the seeds of its own self-destruction," said Bruce Bartlett, a conservative analyst and author of a 2006 book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted American and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

"It's clear we have come to an end of a Republican conservative era," he said.

The Pew poll measured the views of 2,007 adults from Dec. 12 through Jan. 9. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The study of long-term shifts in political attitudes and values is part of series of periodic reports dating back to 1987.

The gap between Republican and Democratic identification, which Pew measured by counting people who are leaning toward one party or the other as well as those with a firm allegiances, is the widest spread between the parties since Pew began since the studies.

Although the gap between Republican and Democratic allegiances speaks to the GOP's current troubles, Kohut said that the shift mostly reflects the defection of independents from the party rather than a more favorable overall assessment of the Democratic Party.

The proportion expressing a positive view of Democrats has declined since January 2001 by six points, to 54%. But the public's regard for Republicans cratered during the Bush years, as the proportion holding a favorable view of the GOP dropped 15 points to 41%.

Republicans seem to be paying a price for a growing sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the country during the Bush years. Three out of 10 people said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the country--a 25-point drop in the last seven years.

While Republicans rode to political power calling for smaller government, support for government action to help the disadvantaged has risen since the GOP took control of Congress in 1994. Back then, 57% believed the government had a responsibility to take care of people who cannot take care of themselves; now 69% believe that.

On the other hand support for Bush's signature issue--a strong, proactive military posture--has waned since 2002, when 62% said that the best way to ensure peace is through military strength. Now, only 49% believe that.

On social issues, the survey found that support for some key conservative positions has edged down: The people who said they supported "old-fashioned values about family and marriage" dipped from 84% in 1994 to 76%.

Support for allowing school boards to have the right to fire homosexual teachers dropped from 39% in 1994 to 28% in 2007.

janet.hook @latimes.com

Quote of the Day

"In all, 83% of Shiites and 97% of Sunni Arabs oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq; 75% of Kurds support them. By more than 3 to 1, Iraqis say the presence of U.S. forces is making the security situation worse."

-- USA Today Poll, 15h 38m ago

In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unity

For four years, Britain and the US have aimed to encourage sectarianism, but ultimately they will fail to divide the country

Sami Ramadani
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian

Two catastrophes have been in the making since President Bush and Tony Blair launched their war on Iraq four years ago. Both are epoch-making, and their resolution will shape regional and world politics for decades to come.

The first catastrophe relates to the political and moral consequences of the war in the US and UK, and its resolution is the urgent task facing the American and British peoples. The second concerns the devastation wrought by the war and subsequent occupation, and the lack of a unified political movement within Iraq that might overcome it.

Bush and Blair are in a state of denial, only offering us more of the same. They allegedly launched the war at first to save the world from Saddam's WMD, then to establish democracy, then to fight al-Qaida's terrorism, and now to prevent civil war and Iranian or Syrian intervention.

Four years after declaring "mission accomplished", the US government is sending more combat troops to add to the bloodbath - all in an effort to impose its imperial will on the Iraqi people, and in the process plunging its own country into its deepest political-moral crisis since Vietnam. Under heavier pressures, Blair, the master of tactical subterfuge, is redeploying Britain's forces within Iraq and Afghanistan, under the guise of withdrawal. He has long known that British bases in Basra and the south were defenceless against attacks by the Sadr movement and others.

Bush, on the other hand, is escalating Iraq's conflict and threatening to launch a new war, this time against Iran. It is hard not to presume that what he means by an exit strategy is to install a client regime in Baghdad, backed by US bases. The Iraqi people will not accept this, and the west should be alerted to the fact that US policy objectives will only lead to wider regional conflicts, rather than to full withdrawal.

In attempting to achieve their objective, the occupation forces will escalate their war with the resistance forces within and north of Baghdad, as well as clashing with the popular Sadr movement in the capital and the south. The latter is, despite the ceasefires and political manoeuvrings, Iraq's biggest organised opposition force to the occupation.

Meanwhile, the destruction of Iraq continues apace and its people are subjected to levels of sustained violence unknown in their history. Overwhelmingly, the violence is a direct or indirect product of the occupation, and the bulk of sectarian violence is widely known in Iraq to be linked to the parties favoured by Washington. For example, forces in control of the various ministries, including the interior ministry, clash regularly.

It is not difficult to see how this violence is linked to the occupation, for it has spawned a multitude of violence-makers: 150,000 occupation forces; 50,000 and rising contracted foreign "mercenaries"; 150,000 Iraqi Facilities Protection forces, paid by the Iraqi regime, controlled by the occupation and engaged in death-squad activities, according to the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki; 400,000 US-trained army and police forces; six US-controlled secret Iraqi militias; and hundreds of private kidnap gangs. Pitted against some or all of these are tens of thousands of militias and resistance forces of various political hues. In total there are about 2 million actively organised armed men in the country. There are about 3,000 attacks on occupation forces every month, while tens of thousands of Iraqis languish in prison, where torture is widespread and trials considered an unnecessary formality.

The success of the occupation's divide-and-rule tactics and their insistence on basing the new political and military structures on sects, religions, and ethnicities is threatening the communal cohesion that was once the country's hallmark. This is a factor in the absence of a united movement, capable of leading the struggle to end the occupation. The occupation has sown divisions where there were none and transformed existing differences into open warfare.

And is it any wonder that the long-suffering Iraqi people find themselves at an impasse. Try catching your breath after decades of brutal dictatorship, 13 years of economic sanctions and four years of an obscene war .

But even in the absence of a unified anti-occupation front, the resistance of the Iraqi people has managed to thwart the world's greatest military empire. And there are signs of a mass rejection of these sectarian forces, and the possibility that public anger will translate into the very unity that is so desperately needed. Rage against corruption and the collapse of public services is sweeping the country, including Kurdistan. Similarly, the proposed corporate occupation of Iraq, disguised as a legal document to tie the country to the oil companies for decades to come, has reminded the population of one of the main reasons for the US-led invasion. It has also reminded them what a self-respecting, sovereign Iraq looked like in 1961, when the government nationalised Iraq's lands for future oil production.

In an opinion poll released by the BBC yesterday, 86% of people are opposed to the division of Iraq. This and other polls also show majority support for armed resistance to the occupation. Four years into this terrible adventure, both the US and Britain must realise that it is time to pack up and leave.

· Sami Ramadani was a political exile from Saddam's regime and is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.

sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk

Sami Ramadani was born in Iraq and became an exile from Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1969, as a result of his political activities in support of democracy and socialism. He opposed the sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people (1991-2003) and the invasion of Iraq (2003). He is active in the movement to end the US-led occupation. He is a senior lecturer in sociology at the London Metropolitan University, a member of the NATFHE trade union and a member of BRICUP (British Committee for Universities in Palestine). He has written commentary on Iraq for the Guardian and contributes to many antiwar publications and websites, including that of IDAO (Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation).