Majority in Poll Favor Deadline For Iraq Pullout

Seventy percent placed primary blame for failing to control the violence in Iraq on the Iraqi government, while just 18 percent said the United States is more at fault.

Bush's overall approval rating stood at 36 percent, up slightly from 33 percent last month. Sixty-two percent disapproved of the way he is handling his job, with 49 percent of those indicating they strongly disapproved.

Approval of his handling of the Iraq war remained near its all-time low. Thirty-one percent said they approved and 67 percent said they disapproved, a slight improvement from December, when 28 percent approved.

Bush also received negative marks on the campaign against terrorism (52 percent disapproved) and on his handling of the economy (55 percent disapproved).

By wide margins, Americans said they trust Democrats in Congress more than Bush to deal with Iraq, health care, the budget, the economy and terrorism. The Democrats' advantage on health care was 37 percentage points, on the budget 27 points, on Iraq and the economy 20 points and on terrorism 13 points.

Overall, however, 41 percent said they approved of the way Congress is doing its job, while 54 percent disapproved.

The disapproval level was marginally higher than it was a month ago. The low point for congressional approval in the past year came a few weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, which resulted in Republicans losing their House and Senate majorities, when 31 percent gave Congress positive marks.

Asked about the performance of new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 50 percent said they approved and 31 percent said they disapproved.

Her disapproval rating a month ago was 25 percent.

On another issue, the poll found that a majority of Americans now distrust the Bush administration on its handling of intelligence. Thirty-five percent said they can trust the administration to report potential threats from other countries honestly and accurately, and 63 percent said they cannot.

The administration has been challenged on the quality of the intelligence underpinning its assertions that Iran is helping insurgents in Iraq.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said they believed that the administration has solid evidence to support those claims, and 44 percent disagreed.

At the same time, 41 percent expressed confidence that the administration will do a good job of handling current tensions with Iran, compared with 58 percent who said they were not confident.

The Post-ABC News poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,082 adults and was conducted between last Thursday and Sunday. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.