ALONG WITH FREEDOM, opinion polls have come to Iraq–opinion polls and newspapers to publish them. While admittedly not yet pretending to Western polling science, the informal survey of 620 people on the streets of Baghdad taken by Al-Mu’tamar, one of the newspapers that have sprung up in Iraq in the last two months, is a landmark in itself and suggests an intriguingly nuanced pattern of opinion. The poll, reported in the May 22 edition (and summarized here), interrogated people of miscellaneous ages and backgrounds. It found support for the war much higher now (77 percent) than before it happened (62 percent said they had been opposed). And it showed respondents supportive of coalition troops’ presence–65 percent said the troops should stay, 77 percent that they had carried out no hostile acts against the population–even though a large majority found fault with the forces’ performance. A full 85 percent of respondents said the troops had “procrastinated and were indifferent to their concerns and problems and failed to maintain order, punish thieves, and protect public property.” Agreement was higher only on condemning the cruelty of Saddam Hussein’s regime (90 percent).

Al-Mu’tamar is published by the pro-democracy umbrella group the Iraqi National Congress, long based in London. The INC’s leader, Ahmed Chalabi, has just spent two months in Iraq (he came out to attend his daughter’s graduation from Harvard). Chalabi’s political adviser, Francis Brooke, also newly returned from Iraq, says he isn’t surprised to find a sophisticated pattern of opinion.