A month after the election, CNN
reports...
Fifty-two percent of respondents to a new poll think Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign amid recent criticism in Congress over his handling of the war in Iraq.
Thirty-six percent of respondents to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said Rumsfeld should not step down, and the remainder had no opinion. The margin of error for the question was 4.5 percentage points among the 1,002 Americans surveyed by telephone between Friday and Sunday.
The defense secretary was recently chided for telling U.S. soldiers headed for Iraq that "you go to war with the Army you have ... not the Army you might want or wish you had."null
In addition, Rumsfeld's wartime performance has been criticized by many Democratic and some Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Trent Lott of Mississippi and John McCain of Arizona.
Despite the criticism, President Bush strongly came out in support of his Pentagon chief during a news conference Monday. null
The secretary's approval rating has fallen from 71 percent in April 2003 at the height of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to 41 percent in the new survey.
As for Bush, 49 percent of respondents said they approved of the job the president is doing. That number is down from his November approval rating of 55 percent. Bush is the first incumbent president to have an approval rating below 50 percent one month after winning re-election. The question had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The charitable
interpretation is that Bush only won because of voter
fraud.
The less charitable interpretation
is that a slender majority of voters in this country are complete and
total dumbasses. Oh yeah, guys, like you didn't notice the war was
going horribly last month? Did you just wake up and notice that the economy is still lackluster, and that
Rumsfeld is a callous prick and that Bush is glib, shallow, and without
substance as a leader?
That's what I thought.
Makes me think of
that line from The Wedding Singer.
"That's a piece of information that would have come in handy
YESTERDAY!!!!!"
