Despite a year of constant combat casualties and long, grinding overseas tours, men and women in uniform strongly back President Bush and his policies in Iraq, according to a Military Times Poll.
But the poll indicates support for administration policy in Iraq is not much higher in the military than among U.S. civilians. Both military members and civilians, poll results show, are more likely to voice approval for the president's overall performance than for his Iraq policies.
The poll also found overwhelming sentiment that more than two years of combat have stretched the military so thin that its effectiveness has eroded.
The findings are part of the annual Military Times Poll, which this year included 933 active-duty military subscribers to Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times. The subscribers were randomly surveyed by mail in late November and early December prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Respondents to the Military Times Poll were nearly evenly split between officers and enlisted troops, and tended to be more career-oriented than their services as a whole. The sample group also included fewer women and minorities than the military population, and it slightly over-represents Army troops.
The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Among its findings:
• The poll found solid support for the president's Iraq policy. Fifty-six percent of those in the Military Times Poll approved of Bush's handling of Iraq.
Still, those numbers are not much higher than support in the United States as a whole. Civilian polls before Saddam's capture showed about half of Americans backing Bush's Iraq policies. Support for Bush has risen significantly in public opinion polls conducted after the dictator's arrest.
"Fifty-six percent is not very high in terms of support," said Andrew Bacevich, a a professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired Army officer. "There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of the handling of Iraq on the part of the people who are paying the price."
But author and retired Army officer Ralph Peters called the numbers "a pleasant surprise."
"These are tough conditions," Peters said of the combined effects of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It speaks well of the men and women in uniform that they're maintaining such high morale."
The Army, which has borne the heaviest burden in Iraq in terms of workload and casualties, also is less approving than the rest of the military: 52 percent approved of Bush's Iraq policy, while about one in four opposed it.
• The military poll found support for the decision to go to war slightly higher than among the public, but the difference was within statistical margins of error.
Sixty-five percent of those in the Military Times Poll said the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over; a Gallup poll found public support at 59 percent.
About 30 percent of military members polled said they had deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom, but there were no significant differences in opinions about Iraq between those who deployed for the war and those who didn't.
