"Support the troops" - or support Bush?

New Zogby poll:

An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

Yo! This is no help to the Republican claims to be speaking for the troops.

Of course, the soldiers in the field never get to decide on their own where the wars will be and against whom. But what it does show is that anti-Iraq War sentiment is very strong even among soldiers there fighting in Iraq.

This next point is cynically used in political polemics over the war. But there is an interesting and practically important empirical question here. Does it actually damage soldiers' morale or affect their combat performance if some or (in this case) nearly three-fourths of the soldiers think as citizens that the war they're fighting is a bad policy?

Bush said in a speech this January 10: "When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale."

Is this true?

Now that nearly three-fourths of the US troops fighting the war are themselves antiwar, are the Bush fans now going to be saying in their speeches that three-fourths of the US Army and Marines fighting in Iraq are losing their morale and doing a substandard job? Doesn't fit very well with the "support our troops" meme, does it?

But I'm not raising the question to make some kind of snarky point. I believe most actual studies of combat morale of soldiers show that the quality of their leadership, the strength of the organization and unit cohesion are the most important factors. I can believe that opposition to the war would worsen the effect morale if those elements and perhaps others were going really badly. But despite the FOXist talking points right now, I don't think there really much if any actual evidence that being critical of the war itself as a matter of policy has any effect on combat morale or performance.

Bush's current poll standing? The lowest ever in this one:

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

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