The survey, conducted March 15-22 in 15 cities across all regions of Iraq, has been distributed to top officials at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department. A copy was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Professional pollsters cautioned about the reliability of data from people living in an area where the security situation is unstable. ``The problem you have in conducting surveys there is doing face-to-face interviews in places where it is dangerous to go outside is inherently difficult,'' said Evans Witt, president of Princeton Survey Research, a polling group that conducts surveys in the U.S. and abroad. The company was not involved in the Iraq poll. (...)

While the poll had some positive signs for U.S. policy makers, opposition to the U.S. presence was strong everywhere except the Kurdish north. That area, long oppressed by Hussein's regime, gained some autonomy under the protection of U.S. air forces after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. In the Shiite-dominated south, 52 percent said they strongly opposed the coalition, and 68 percent in Baghdad felt the same way.

The survey also shows that, everywhere except the Kurdish region, majorities ranging from 53 percent in and around Kirkuk to 90 percent in the Sunni cities of Tikrit and Baquba believe the U.S.-led forces will not ``improve the situation in Iraq.''

That isn't even the worst of it. While solid majorities of Iraqis oppose the United States occupation, nearly a majority actively supports the insurgency:

Meanwhile, a recent internal poll conducted for the US-led coalition found that nearly 45 percent of the population supported the insurgent attacks, making accurate intelligence difficult to obtain. Only 15 percent of those polled said they strongly supported the US-led coalition.

A majority of Iraqis oppose the occupation, yet we occupy. How is that liberation? Nearly a majority actively support deadly attacks on occupation forces, and we wonder why the insurgency isn't going away. We are literally fighting half of the Iraqi population, for crying out loud, in addition to the foreign insurgents. To make matters worse, opposition to the occupation and support for the insurgency might be even higher than this poll suggests, since it is clearly more difficult to conduct the poll in regions where the violence is the worst. Is it really too much to assume that where the violence against the occupation is the worst, support for the insurgency is at its highest?

Of course, Iraqis aren't the only ones opposed to indefinite occupation: (emphasis mine):

The Harris Poll. June 7-12, 2005. N=1,015 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

"Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there OR bringing most of our troops home in the next year?"

Wait for Stable Govt 33

Bring Home in Next Year 63

Let me phrase this as calmly as I can: what the are doing indefinitely occupying a country without a timeline for withdrawal when two-thirds of Americans want us out in a year and the majority of Iraqis want us out either now or in the very near future? Occupying nations against their will is clearly sifting through the worst parts of the ash-heap of history.

Iraqis don't want us in Iraq, yet we stay in Iraq. I know that there are some people out there who oppose withdrawal, and I wish to ask them a simple question. How can you justify the occupation of a foreign country that did not attack us when the overwhelming majority of that country does not want us to be there? How is that not wrong? What is perhaps even worse is that the majority of the Democratic leadership wants us to stay in Iraq, even though the majority of Iraqis do not want us to stay in Iraq, and the vast majority of people who vote for Demcorats do not want us to stay in Iraq.

This is just reprehensible. There is no justification for staying there. If we are serious about self-determination, then we should respect the wishes of the Iraqi people and leave. Democrats and Republicans alike always bring up what they imagine will be the insurgency's reaction to a timetable. What is particularly stunning and grotesque is that no one ever brings up what the Iraqi people themselves would think of the idea. That is what counts. That is what we should be listening too. Right now, we are simply acting as though we know what's best for them.