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MOD poll - 82 per cent of Iraqis "strongly opposed" to occupation

Sean Rayment | 23.10.2005 09:55 | Anti-militarism

A survey conducted by an Iraqi university team on behalf of the UK's Ministry of Defence reveals huge opposition to the presence of British troops and widespread support for attacks on them.

Brief summary of findings, more at the link -

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

 http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/wirq23.xml

Sean Rayment

Comments

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Coalition forces are only still in Iraq to counter the insurgency!

24.10.2005 08:48

The coalition forces are no longer occuppying Iraq, Iraq is now ruled by its own democractic government. They are there to help the new Iraqi security forces counter the insurgency. If the coalition troops left Iraq now, there would be an abosulte bloodbath similar to what happened when the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government of Cambodia and sluaghtered hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, or what has been happening for the last few years in the Dafour Region of Sudan. The insurgents are mostly Sunni Iraqis together with thousands of foreign Al Qaeda terrorists. They hate the Shias and the Kurds. The bulk of Shias and Kurds support the new democratic government of Iraq. These people the Shias and Kurds would be massacred in their hundreds of thousands should coalition troops suddenly pull out. Is that what you want, a bloodbath? I can't understand the mentality of the left sometimes!

Observer


Re: Coalition forces are only still in Iraq to counter the insurgency!

24.10.2005 12:05

The article is simply reporting the results of a poll in Iraq. Access to this sort of information is important if we are to draw valid conclusions about the situation of Iraq, and the article suggests no specific conclusion.

Your comment seems to suggest that just by reporting a poll showing Iraqi opposition to the presence of foreign soldiers on their land the reporter is expressing the opinion that all troops should withdraw no matter what the consequences. The reporter expresses no opinion at all on this matter.

Your sort of comment is a typical example of the mentality of `the right', confronted with uncomfortable information that threatens to make your position untenable you attempt to get people to shut up and to suppress the information by taking some spurious moral high ground. Hence you quickly end up saying `Is that what you want, a bloodbath?'

Your comments `Iraq is now ruled by its own democractic government' and `If the coalition troops left Iraq now, there would be an abosulte bloodbath' are debateable at best. The presence of US and UK troops is responsible for most (at least two thirds) of the civilian casualties in Iraq (in fact the US is killing more people than would likely die in any civil war, around 40,000 a year, see the Lancet study) and is escalating, not holding back, the threat of an all-out civil war in Iraq. As long as people like al-Zarqawi can call on opposition to the brutal practices (killing, imprisonment, torture, destruction of homes) of the occupation to give credit to their cause they will be able to generate new recruits for their holy war against the Shia, increasing the chance of an Iraqi-on-Iraqi civil war, and US policies such as hiring Shia troops to carry out some of the occupations dirty work (such as destroying homes) does not help.

Suicide bombings never continue after the withdrawal of an occupying power. The US and UK troops need to get out of Iraq before it's too late and a civil war becomes invevitable.

chombee