Iraq Notebook
Iraqi leader urges Turkey to invest

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Turkish officials said they also want more trade, but noted serious security problems remain. Saboteurs and looters often target a key oil pipeline running from Iraq's northern oil fields to Turkey's Mediterranean coast and kidnappings or killings of Turkish businessmen and truck drivers is another major concern.

Iraq, which has the world's second-largest proven reserves of crude oil, normally exports about 250,000 barrels of oil a day through Turkey from its northern oil fields. Most of Iraq's oil is in the south and is exported through the Persian Gulf.

Al-Yawer and Kursad Tuzmen, Turkey's top trade official, said plans are progressing for a second border crossing between the neighbors. Turkey has long planned to open a second crossing to alleviate long lines at the current crossing at Habur, where some 2,000 Turkish trucks cross into Iraq each day with goods for Iraqis and the U.S. military.

On Monday, a Turkish company said gunmen waylaid a convoy of trucks delivering supplies to U.S. forces in Iraq and took two Turkish drivers hostage outside Mosul — the latest in a series of kidnappings of Turkish truck drivers.

Al-Yawer repeated his pledge to stop Kurdish separatists using bases in northern Iraq to launch attacks on Turkey, which blamed the rebels for bomb attacks in Istanbul last week that killed two people.

Public support slips for decision to go to war

WASHINGTON — Nine months of chaos and casualties in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's capture have taken a heavy toll on American opinion of President Bush's decision to go to war.

In December, when Saddam was caught, public support for Bush's decision to go to war was a ratio of 2-to-1 in favor. Now the public is evenly divided on whether the war was the right thing to do or whether it was a mistake.

Older people, minorities, people with lower incomes, residents of the Northeast and Catholics are among those increasingly skeptical of the war effort, according to Associated Press polling.

Both Democrats and independents lost enthusiasm for the war after Saddam was captured. Almost nine in 10 Republicans still say it was the right thing to do.
 
Overall, about half in an August AP-Ipsos poll said they think the war in Iraq was the right thing to do. But even some of those people have doubts about what has happened since the invasion.

In the August poll, those most likely to say the Iraq war was the right thing to do were Republicans, Southerners, those who earn more than $50,000 a year and young adults.

While the number dubious about the Iraq war has grown over the past eight months, the number who think the United States must stay until the job is done remains fairly constant. Since spring, just over half in various polls have said they support staying in Iraq until it is stabilized.

The most recent AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults was conducted Aug. 3-5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups like older Americans.

Also

Iraqi police freed a Jordanian hostage in a raid south of Baghdad yesterday, detaining three men believed to have played a role in the kidnapping, a police spokesman said.

At least 80 people, including a number of Jordanians, have been kidnapped by insurgents and criminal gangs in Iraq in recent months. Some kidnappings were designed to extort ransom while others had the political motive of trying to force foreign troops and companies to leave the country.

An unmanned U.S. reconnaissance plane crashed north of the Iraqi capital yesterday, the military said. The U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator plane crashed near a U.S. base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.