Bomb Iran, majority of Americans says in new poll Nick Juliano

Published: Tuesday October 30, 2007



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Print This Email This Despite President Bush's perpetually abysmal approval ratings, it appears his increasingly hostile rhetoric against Iran has drummed up enough fear of a "nuclear holocaust" or a World War III that a majority of Americans are in favor of a US strike against the country aimed a curtailing its apparent nuclear ambitions, a new poll shows. The Zogby International survey shows 52 percent of Americans would support a strike on Iran, while 53 percent expect President Bush to launch such an attack before the end of his second term. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is voters' No. 1 choice to deal with Iran, with 21 percent saying they would like to see her take on Tehran from the White House. Republican Rudy Giuliani was voters' second choice, with 15 percent. Just 29 percent of Americans think the US should not attack Iran, with one in five people unsure about military action. Of those who would support a strike, 28 percent believe military action should wait until the next president is in office, while 23 percent want to see Bush let lose US missiles against Iran. The poll results were viewed with a "Here we go again" attitude from bloggers chagrined at the apparent lack of lessons learned by Americans as the war launched against another hostile Middle Eastern regime stretches towards its fifth year. "It is utterly stunning that, after the great difficulties we have clearly faced in Iraq (a situation far from finished, by the way), that an absolute majority would favor a strike on Iran at this time," writes Dr. Steven Taylor at PoliBlog. "Even if we assume that the die-hard 25%-30% who still approve of the way the President is doing his job also are in favor of such a strike, where do the other 27%-22% come from to get the pro-strike total to 52%?" The support for an Iranian strike coincides with substantial fears of further terrorist attacks demonstrated in the Zogby poll. More than two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) believe another terrorist attack is likely on US soil and nearly one-in three believe such a strike will come before 2010. Polls conducted prior to the invasion of Iraq showed larger majorities of Americans in favor of military action, and around 80 percent of Americans believed Iraq posed a threat to the United States in late 2002 and early 2003. Don Surber, blogging for West Virginia's Charleston Daily Mail compared the speculation over a strike on Iran to another showdown over nuclear proliferation nearly half a century ago. "I was in grade school when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened 45 Octobers ago. I was gung-ho for taking Castro out. Wiser heads prevailed  in the Soviet Union as well as the United States," he writes. "The security of the world rests on American shoulders. Id bet against a military strike. There are enough wiser heads on both sides."

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