A majority of military families disapprove of President George W. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
The families, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, also consider the invasion was not worth it, according to the poll published on Friday.
The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war's fifth year, said The Los Angeles Times.
Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does, said the poll.
And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60 percent say the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.
Patience with the war, which has now lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II, is wearing thin -- particularly among families who have sent a service member to the conflict. One-quarter say American troops should stay "as long as it takes to win." Nearly seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or "right away."
Military families are only slightly more patient: 35 percent are willing to stay until victory; 58 percent want the troops home within a year or sooner.
The military families surveyed are in sync with the general population, 64 percent of whom call for a withdrawal by the end of next year.
The survey, conducted under the supervision of Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,467 adults nationwide from Nov. 30 through Monday. It included 631 respondents from military families and 152 who have had someone in their family stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The margin of error for the entire sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points; for military families it is 4 percentage points, and for families with someone in the war zone it is 8 percentage points.
Source: Xinhua
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