What Iraqi people think: Views getting grimmer

WASHINGTON — As President Bush marked the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war with a plea for patience, a survey found that the optimism that helped sustain Iraqis during the first few years of the war has dissolved into widespread fear, anger and distress amid unrelenting violence.

The poll — the third in Iraq since early 2004 by ABC News and media partners — draws a stark portrait of an increasingly pessimistic population under great emotional stress. Among the findings of this survey for ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD German TV:

• The number of Iraqis who say their own life is going well has dipped from 71 percent in November 2005 to 39 percent now.

• About three-fourths of Iraqis report feelings of anger, depression and difficulty concentrating.

• More than half of Iraqis have curtailed activities like going out of their homes, going to markets or other crowded places and traveling through police checkpoints.

• Only 18 percent of Iraqis have confidence in U.S. and coalition troops, and 86 percent are concerned that someone in their household will be a victim of violence.

• Slightly more than half of Iraqis — 51 percent — said they thought it was "acceptable" for "other people" to attack coalition forces. In the 2004 survey, 17 percent said such attacks were acceptable. More than nine in 10 Sunni Arabs in Iraq now feel this way.

Developments in Iraq

Saddam VP hanged: Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was Saddam Hussein's vice president, was hanged Tuesday for the killings of 148 Shiites. Ramadan was the fourth man to be executed in the killings of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the city of Dujail.

Mosque bombed: Bombs tore through a Shiite mosque during prayers in Baghdad and struck several targets in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Monday, killing at least 26 people.

Crackdown operation: U.S. and Iraqi troops reportedly surrounded two Shiite mosques where many insurgents were hiding, as part of the crackdown in the volatile Hurriyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad, state television said.

• While 63 percent said they felt very safe in their neighborhoods in late 2005, only 26 percent said they feel that way now.

Eighty percent of Iraqis surveyed reported experiencing some kind of violence nearby, according to the nationally representative survey conducted Feb. 25 to March 5 among 2,212 Iraqis, including oversamples — or additional interviews — in Anbar province, the Sadr City section of Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk. Results were subject to a sampling-error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Polling in a war-torn country can be more difficult because respondents are fearful. ABC pollster Gary Langer said the interviewers were experienced in polling in such situations and the questionnaire was extensive and carefully translated, adding that those who were afraid could refuse to participate. The survey was done by D3 Systems, a pollster specializing in conflict countries.

More than 100 Iraqi interviewers conducted the poll and some reported seeing bombings, beatings and even a mass kidnapping. Several teams of interviewers were detained by police — but every interviewer made it home safely.

More than half of Iraqis surveyed said a friend or relative has been hurt or killed in the violence, while almost nine in 10 worried that a loved one will be hurt.

The levels of stress soar outside relatively peaceful Kurdistan, especially in Baghdad and the Sunni-dominated Anbar province, the poll found.

Fewer than half in the country, 42 percent, said that life in Iraq now is better than it was under Saddam Hussein, the late dictator accused of murdering tens of thousands during a brutal regime. Thirty-six percent say things in their lives are worse today, up from 29 percent in the 2005 poll, which was taken during a period of relative optimism ahead of parliamentary elections.

Iraqis' pessimism about safety spills over into their views of most aspects of life — the economy, basic needs like power and clean water, even the risks of sending their children to school.

But views of the U.S. military presence are contradictory among Iraqis, just as they are in this country.

About four in five Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. troops, but only a third want those troops to leave Iraq immediately.

"It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home," said Bush, who has threatened to veto a plan by Democrats in Congress to require the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008.

A separate poll of Iraqis released over the past weekend by the British firm Opinion Research Business found that only one-third of Iraqis surveyed believed the Bush administration's troop "surge" plan, which will bring an additional 28,700 troops to Iraq by June, was intended to bring security and stability back to the nation.

Twenty-two percent of the 5,019 Iraqis surveyed said the new troops were part of a ploy to position the United States to attack other countries in the region. Five percent thought the Americans were planning to take control of Iraq.

The Opinion Research poll was the largest of its kind published since the U.S.-led invasion and was based on face-to-face interviews last month with randomly selected Iraqis in all 18 of the country's provinces. It has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points. Opinion Research Business is a London market-research firm whose clients include Morgan Stanley and Brown-Forman Beverages, the makers of Jack Daniel's whiskey.

Information from The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times is included in this report.