• Do you approve or disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq?
  
• Did the U.S. make the right decision to go to war?
  
• Has the war made the United Sates safer from terrorism?
  
• Should the U.S. keep troops in Iraq or bring them home?

Both Democrats and Republicans, but mostly Republicans, have worked hard to ignore the public's cry for a timetable in Iraq, and to frame the debate about future action in Iraq as either a timetable vs. no timetable debate, or a total withdrawl vs. no withdrawal debate. That, however, is not where the public stands. This issue for the public is neither whether or not there should be a timetable, nor whether or not we should withdrawl all troops now or not. Instead of either question, the issue for the public is how long we stay in Iraq. You would have to be extremely thick-headed to not realize that public support for the war is heavily contingent upon the length of the war:

As long as it takes    26
Three years or more    32
One year or more       45
Less than one year     50
Unsure			5

Polling firms play an important role in shaping the national debate. However, with the exception of the Newsweek poll already quoted, and the Harris poll from June, none of them have ever bothered to ask the American public just how long they think the United Sates should stay in Iraq. They continue to ask the academic and moral question about whether or not what we did in early 2003 was the right thing to do. They continue to accept the Bush administration and Democratic foreign policy establishment line that the main debate right now is whether or not to have a timetable. That may be the debate in D.C., but that is not the debate nationwide. Once and a while, a poll with actual dates does slip out. When it does, it shows that the overwhelming majority of the public wants to end the war within two years or less. Such polls do not slip out often, however, and the debate on our future actions in Iraq remains constrained by the D.C. bubble.

Since the start of the war, polling firms have asked the public whether or not they thought the decision to go to war was correct more than five hundred times. Further, in that same time frame, they have asked the public if they approve or disapprove of Bush's handling of the war more than 1,000 times. By contrast, they have asked the public how long they would like to continue fighting the war only twice. Considering that how long we intend to keep fighting the war is the number one issue when it comes to Iraq right now, it is the responsibility of those who frame the debate to at least pose that question to the American people. That question is a lot more important than whether or not we think what we did two and a half years ago was the right thing to do, because we can't do anything about that now.

Don't hide it people. Let's have this discussion. Just ask us.