What They’re Saying in Anbar Province
IN his address to the nation on Thursday, President Bush singled out progress in Anbar Province as the model for United States success in Iraq. The president’s claims echoed those made earlier in the week by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, in his Congressional testimony. And they raised a question worth examining: Do United States military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from Anbar’s bitter anti-Americanism?
The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.
Al Qaeda, it should be said, is overwhelmingly - almost unanimously - unpopular in Anbar, as it is in the rest of Iraq. But our enemies’ enemies are not necessarily our friends. The United States, it turns out, is equally unpopular there.
In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now - up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.
Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq - 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow.
There are critical improvements in Anbar. Most important have been remarkable advances in confidence in the Iraqi Army and police. In ABC’s survey in March, not a single respondent rated local security positively - now 38 percent do. Nonetheless, nobody surveyed in Anbar last month gave the United States any credit. Ratings of living conditions remain dismal: respondents were deeply dissatisfied with the availability of electricity and fuel, jobs, medical care and a host of other elements of daily life. And the violence, while sharply down, has hardly ended: One in four reported that car bombs or suicide attacks had occurred near them in the last six months. Last week’s murder of Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an Anbar sheik who had allied himself with the United States, only underscored this grim reality.
Anbar’s tribal leaders may have any number of motivations for their alliance with the United States. It’s been reported that the United States government has provided them arms, matériel and money, as well as undertaking more than $700 million in reconstruction projects in the province.
But it seems clear that popular sentiment in Anbar is another matter entirely. Indeed, one other result from our poll may be of particular interest to Anbar’s tribal leaders and the United States military alike: Just 23 percent in Anbar expressed confidence in their “local leaders”; 77 percent had little or none. That’s better than it was in March - but still nearly the lowest level of confidence in local leaders we measured anywhere in Iraq.
Confidence in local leaders, as it happens, is lower only in Diyala - the other province Mr. Bush mentioned in his speech as a focal point of progress in Iraq.
Gary Langer is the director of polling for ABC News.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Doesn’t Bush and co. know: It’s Occupation. We will never stop the civil war. I’m getting tired of all of Bush’s excuses. How many statagies has he tried over 5yrs? Those didn’t work and neither will this one.
Who cares what those ungrateful Iraqis think? We’re winning, someone’s losing, and Halloween candy is on sale!
So Anbar and America express similar confidence in their leaders?
Kinda gives Al Qaeda a leg up, doesn’t it?
It’s all about Operation Iraqi Liberation or OIL as Greenspan now admits…
bush’s pants have been up and down more times than a whore’s pants on payday.
forget him, he is a liar.
the tragedy is that anyone is listening. the polls show however that every time he gets the punch and judy thing going, fewer and fewer people listen.
like with betrayus
i wonder though - how does such an unpopular prez get to pull off all this shite with no repercussions. gee, you don’t think th whole government in in on this do you?
i mean, not the whole government? do you?
do you?
Anbar Province is critical precisely because it is through Anbar that the Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline must traverse- also the reason for American bases of H1, H2, and H3 along it’s route.
see Oil from Iraq : An Israeli pipedream? Jane’s Security News
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr030416_1_n.shtml
“All of this lends weight to the theory that Bush’s war is part of a masterplan to reshape the Middle East to serve Israel’s interests. Haaretz quoted Paritzky as saying that the pipeline project is economically justifiable because it would dramatically reduce Israel’s energy bill. ”
“US efforts to get Iraqi oil to Israel are not surprising. Under a 1975 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the US guaranteed all Israel’s oil needs in the event of a crisis. The MoU, which has been quietly renewed every five years, also committed the USA to construct and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel, equivalent to some US$3bn in 2002. Special legislation was enacted to exempt Israel from restrictions on oil exports from the USA. ”
“Moreover, the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market, even if that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not available to carry the crude to Israel. All of this adds up to a potentially massive financial commitment. “
Why didn’t the Democrats use this information against Gen. Betray Us?
Incompetent. Only Barbara Boxer was appropriately tough on this con man running the illegal occupation.
As Laura Logan reported for CBS a few days ago, the statistics are misleading. In certain areas, the rival factions have either all been killed or run off. This ethnic cleansing has led to a shortage of people to kill, thus the death rates have fallen.
Another article wherein Americans “patiently” discuss the pros and cons of Iraqi occupation while Iraqis scramble for their lives in the wreckage and havock created by Bush’s illegal war on civilians.
Whether Anbar Province or Iraq in general, The United States is in Iraq for the wrong reasons.
Two years ago, a young eight year old from Switzerland approached me in a Barcelona Hotel. We were having a Democrats Abroad meeting. He asked me, “Are you trying to get the United States out of Iraq?” I said, “Yes, why do you think we are there?” His response was, “Because of the oil, you people use most of the oil and want to control it.”
I asked his parents if they were teaching him that stuff and they said they had nothing to do with it.
An eight year old knew then what it took Alan Greenspan seven years to say, “The Bush Administration is in Iraq for the oil.”
Did the corporate media print headlines? No
Did the corporate media seek interviews? No
Will the American people be told that the reason we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan was for the control of the Middle East Oil and the Caspian Sea oil? Of course not.
Who cares if 75% to 85% of Iraqi people want the United States Military out of Iraq now? Who cares that 4 million Iraqi people have been displaced? Who cares that over 600,000 Iraqi citizens have died? (Johns Hopkins Institute Study)
Iraq is not Viet Nam? Iraq is Capitalist Conservatives at their worst?
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what the price of war is–havoc, distruction, corruption, mental illness, cholera, displacement, unemployment and the list goes on. This was purposely done to depopulate and destroy…
Our government and the Israeli government are a bunch of Nihilists…they don’t give a damn they are out for themselves and to hell with everybody else, Iraqi and US citizens and military personnel included…