Nearly three out of every four respondents in Egypt and Jordan said they favoured an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, while large pluralities in the other three countries favoured that option over withdrawal only after Iraq's unity and stability are assured, maintaining current U.S. troop strength, or increasing it, as the Bush administration is currently doing. Indeed, support for the latter two options was less than ten percent in every country except Saudi Arabia. In addition, 47 percent of Jordanian and 38 percent of Egyptian respondents said they worried more about the prospect of a permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq than about its partition, the spread of its civil war, or about the strengthening of Iran.
Similarly, 57 percent of Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq according to a recent Newsweek poll. The findings from the Pew Research Center earlier this week said 59 percent of Americans supported a withdrawal deadline. The Democrats rode to power last November on the public's discontent with the war in Iraq.
The growing public opposition in the United States to the war, the Democrats' electoral victory on an exit platform, which led them to the control of the Congress, and the American debate on the deadlines for exiting Iraq are all indeed public knowledge in Iraq as well as in Arab countries. However the Democratic "alternative" has yet to make its impact felt in a way that could improve the US image among Arabs and potentially this "alternative" will blacken that image further if and when it receives more scrutiny.
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