Concern over Iraq drives Bush's rating to new low

President Bush talks to the press at the conclusion of a briefing from the Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Task Force in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington Saturday, March 11, 2006. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This is from CNN.Com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Public opinion of President Bush hit a new low, with concerns about the war in Iraq driving his approval rating down to 36 percent, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll out Monday.

Only 38 percent said they believe the nearly 3-year-old war was going well for the United States, down from 46 percent in January, while 60 percent said they believed the war was going poorly. And 57 percent said they believe the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, near September's record high of 59 percent in the same poll.

Nearly half of those polled said they believe Democrats would do a better job of managing the war -- even though only a quarter of them said the opposition party has a clear plan for resolving the situation. (Interactive: poll results)

Pollsters quizzed 1,001 adults between Friday and Sunday for the poll, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Bush's approval rating of 36 percent is the lowest mark of his presidency in a Gallup poll, falling a percentage point below the 37 percent approval he scored in November. The last CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted February 28-March 1, put his job approval at 38 percent. (View Bush's second term approval ratings)

Sixty percent of those surveyed in the latest poll said they disapproved of his performance in office, the same figure as in the last poll.

What else could I say here? A majority of the country thinks that President Bush is sending this country down the wrong track, with regards to the situation in Iraq. And what is President Bush's response to this? How about more PR-spin:

Bush launched his latest effort to shore up support for the war Monday, accusing Iran of providing explosives used to attack American troops and telling an audience at George Washington University that U.S. forces were "making progress" against insurgents. He also praised Iraqis for averting civil war despite the sectarian violence that came after February's bombing of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a revered Shiite Muslim shrine.

"The situation in Iraq is still tense, and we're still seeing acts of sectarian violence and reprisal," Bush said. "Yet out of this crisis, we've also seen signs of a hopeful future."

President Bush has backed himself into a corner. If he starts pulling troops out of Iraq now, then that would constitute an acknowledgement that the entire Iraq war, and PNAC doctrine of American imperialism is a complete an utter failure. Any withdrawal of American troops would result in the collapse of the Iraqi government, and an all-out civil war between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds for dividing up the country. And if Bush continues with his "stay the course," PR-spin, we're going to see more violence, more American casualties, and more plummeting Bush poll numbers. It is a no-win situation where no one in the Bush White House has a clue on how to resolve Iraq.

So we'll continue to remain stuck in this Purgatory.