According to a recent poll of likely voters, half of Americans expect things to get worse in Iraq in the next few months.
Just 30 percent said things will likely get better, said the survey by Rasmussen Reports. The attitude about the future of Iraq was affected by party affiliation, with 72 percent of Democrats saying things will get worse.
The poll also found 55 percent believe Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should stay on the job, with 31 percent saying he should resign over the Iraqi prison-abuse issue.
When asked about the fate of soldiers involved in the abuse, 56 percent said they should be court-martialed – a consistent figure across demographic and ideological lines. Just 26 percent said they should not be court-martialed.
According to the survey, 40 percent of Americans believe the soldiers who performed the abuse were simply following orders, while 34 percent think they were acting on their own.
Republicans and conservatives tend to believe that the soldiers acted on their own. Others tend to believe that they were following orders, Rasmussen said.
The national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted May 11-12. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
