Spain’s new socialist PM, Sr. Zapatero, called Iraq a disaster, and suggested that Bush and Blair "engage in some
self criticism " (I like that, a very European way of putting things, don’t you think? That’s what my father was told to do by the Stalinists when he was arrested for "rumor mongering", i.e., calling some communist a communist s.o.b.) He didn’t deny it. He got three months and was told to engage in some self criticism. He didn’t. And neither should Bush). ABC News has conducted a serious poll in Iraq, the first of its kind.
Note the title: "Most Iraqis Ambivalent About the War, But Not Its Results." The short of it is this critical percentage (but the rest of it is also good): 71% of Iraqis say that a year from now their lives will be much better. That optimism is meaningful. Read the whole thing; look at the charts carefully because the text is often misleading.
One of the ABC reporters mentioned this to me this afternoon. Some of the numbers are very telling. Note that most think that their lives are better now than before the war. Note also the huge disparities in numbers between Kurds, which largely supported the war, and Arabs, the majority of which disapproved of the war.