Americans more upbeat about Iraq, poll shows [View All]

[Barrett808]

JOE BURBANK / Orlando Sentinel
President George W. Bush reacts to the cheering audience as he greets Lt. Col. Lisette Bonano as he talks to troops at MacDill Air Force Base.

Americans more upbeat about Iraq, poll shows
By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A new poll shows that Americans have become much more upbeat about events in Iraq, giving President Bush his first political boost in months.

About 57 percent of Americans think that the military effort is going well, up from 46 percent last month. During the same period, Bush went from trailing Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to leading slightly, 48 percent to 46 percent. A month ago, Kerry was on top in the presidential race, 50 percent to 45 percent.

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"The terrain will surely shift between now and Election Day," Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said in a campaign analysis posted on the Internet. "Anyone who believes that the election could not go either way is too partisan to be helped."

The brightening public mood on Iraq may stem from several recent developments that pierced the gloom of continuing suicide bombings and other attacks. Perhaps most important, the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq declined sharply after U.S. forces negotiated a shaky truce with militia forces led by rebel cleric Moqtada al Sadr, ending open combat against a two-month Shiite uprising.

In addition, a United Nations envoy brokered the selection of a new Iraqi interim government, and the U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed the planned June 30 power shift there. At the same time, news coverage of the prisoner-abuse scandal has fallen off.

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