WASHINGTON - Senior Pentagon officials expressed concern about declining public support for the war in Iraq Thursday but pushed back against calls in Congress for a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces there.
"I think it's fair to speak on behalf of the commanders and say that they would probably not welcome an artificially imposed deadline," said Lieutenant General James Conway, operations director of the Joint Staff.
"They have their plan. It's a plan for victory. And forces will be withdrawn when victory is accomplished between US and Iraqi forces," he said at a Pentagon news conference.
Amid polls showing eroding public support for the war, Republican congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina over the weekend proposed setting a date for the withdawal of US troops, stirring debate among lawmakers over an exit strategy.
Conway, a former commander in Iraq, acknowledged that the signs that public is turning against the war was worrisome, and made a comparison to the Vietnam War.
The Vietnamese, he said, "realized what I think our contemporary enemy realizes, that American public opinion is the center of gravity. That a democracy can't do certain things if in fact its citizens don't support it."
"So it is concerning that our public is not as supportive as perhaps they once were," he said.
A poll published Monday by USA Today found that 59 percent of Americans want a full or partial pullout of troops from Iraq, the largest percentage in favor of withdrawal since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll published last week found that 52 percent of those surveyed believed that the war in Iraq had not made the United States a safer place to live, the first time that has been a majority sentiment since the war began.
06/16/2005 16:43 GMT