Majority Favours Rumsfeld's Exit.

With a majority saying the war was a mistake and most people believing that Defence Secretary Rumsfeld should lose his job, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll during the week showed a slight majority favoured Rumsfeld's exit and believed the war contributed to the long-term US security problems, with 70% of Americans thinking gains had come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56% to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" - an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld at a morning news conference on Dec. 20, but the Pentagon chief who soared to international celebrity and widespread admiration after the 9/11 terrorist attacks three years ago can be glad he answers to an audience of one, said the Washington Post. Among the public, 35% of respondents approved of his job performance, and 52% said Bush should give Rumsfeld his walking papers.

Seven weeks since his re-election victory over Democrat John F. Kerry and four weeks before his second inauguration, the poll suggests Bush is in a paradoxical situation - a triumphant president who remains acutely vulnerable in public opinion on a national security issue that is dominating headlines and could shadow his second term. While the results are bad for Bush, the president has more support for his policies over the choices he faces going forward.

A strong majority, 58%, support keeping US forces in Iraq until "civil order is restored", even in the face of continued US causalities. By a slight margin, 48% to 44%, more voters agreed with Bush that the US was making "significant progress" towards its goal of establishing democracy in Iraq. Yet, by a similar margin, the public believes the US is not making significant progress towards restoring civil order.

This was just one area where there was considerable ambivalence and even pessimism about the challenges confronting US policy in the coming months. On the question of whether Iraq is prepared for elections to be held on Jan. 30 - a topic widely debated among national security experts - 58% of respondents believed the violence-plagued country was not ready. Nonetheless, 60% wanted elections to go forward as scheduled - even though 54% did not expect honest results with a "fair and accurate vote count" - and 54% were not confident elections will produce a stable government that can rule effectively.

Bush waged his re-election campaign heavily on national security, but the polling data reaffirm what similar surveys showed during the campaign: He is winning only half the case. A full 57% disapprove of his handling of Iraq, a number that is seven percentage points higher than a poll taken in September. But the president's core political asset, public confidence in his leadership on terrorism, remains intact, albeit down significantly from even a year ago, with 53% approving of his record on terrorism, while 43% do not. Those numbers were 70% and 28% a year ago recently.

The public splits down the middle on Bush's overall job performance, with 48% approving while 49% disapprove, percentages that closely approximate results taken just before the election. By contrast, President Bill Clinton had an approval of 60% in a poll taken just before he began his second term. The Post-ABC results were consistent with other newly released surveys.

Time magazine, which has named Bush its "Person of the Year", found that 49% approved of his job performance, little changed from before the election. A Pew Research Centre survey showed that the angry divisions about Bush that marked the 2004 campaign were hardly bridged by the election's end - nor were the sharply divergent appraisals of reality. By emphatic majorities, Bush voters were upbeat on whether things were going well in Iraq and with the economy, while Kerry voters were negative.

A total of 1,004 randomly selected Americans were interviewed on Dec. 16-19. The margin of sampling error for the results was plus or minus three percentage points.