Having liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, the Bush-Cheney administration apparently felt that they had liberated themselves from any need to seriously consider Iraqi public opinion--or the US public's feelings, for that matter.

When the Bush and Cheney administration promote continuing the Iraq war long after the supposed September deadline for the "surge," perhaps maintaining an ongoing US presence for decades as in Korea, they betray the utter irrelevance of the opinions of the "liberated" about determining their own futures.

This disdain for authentic democracy in Iraq has long been evident, as with the imposition of Paul Bremer's hallucinatory free-market plan for restructuring Iraq's economy that resulted in enormous economic dislocation and surely helped to fuel the early stages of the insurgency. (For an exceptionally well-written and compelling account, see Naomi Klein's "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Prusuit of a Neo-Con Utopia" from Harper's magazine at http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html )

Contempt for the liberated Iraqis' views was also apparent when the US held off elections as long as possible, resisting demands from genuine leaders until they could no longer be ignored without acute international embarrassment for the Bush administration. When the elections were finally scheduled, the US claimed credit for promoting the very democratic process that they had sought to defer indefinitely.

Finally, polling data shows precisely how the continuing US military presence is totally at odds with the overwhelming majority sentiment of the Iraqis:

• 80% of Iraqis believe that the presence of US forces increases violence; 60% regard attacks on US forces as legitimate (mid-2006 polls by US State Dept. and the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes).
• "About 90% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the US-led invasion than it is today, reported the United Press International in Nov., 2006, based on a study of residents in Baghdad, Anbar, Najaf, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, based in Baghdad.
• Two-thirds of Baghdad residents want an immediate withdrawal, according to a US State Dept. poll taken in mid-2006.
• 80% of Iraqis favor "near-term troop withdrawal, according to a Nov., 2005 Brookings Institution poll.
• 82% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of US-British forces and under 1% believe that they have enhanced security. (British Ministry of Defence study, Aug. 2005)

I may be going out on a limb, but could there possibly be a consistent pattern here suggesting what  the overwhelming majority of Iraqis feel?Perhaps the Iraqi people are trying to say something. Something like, the very presence of US invaders fuels violence; the removal of US troops will help create a path toward peace.

But the opinions of the Iraqis clearly carry no more weight with Bush and Cheney than do those of the American public. Recent polls like the May 24 CB/NY Times poll show 61% of Americans believing that the US should have never invaded Iraq, with 76% convinced that the war is "going badly," including 52% of Republicans.

The Bush administration has incessantly tried to cast those opposing the war as failing to "support the troops." But similar anti-war attitudes are held by the US troops in Iraq, as suggested by a 2006 poll by James Zogby showing that 72% of US soldiers in Iraq felt that they should be withdrawn by the end of that year.

As Noam Chomsky in his recent book Interventions (which provides the above opinion data on the Iraqi people) trenchantly observes, "Generally, however, public opinion--in Iraq, the United States, is not considered relevant to policy-making, unless it may impede their [elite policymakers'] preferred choices."