Biting the hand of friendship by Jim Lobe

Large majorities of Iraqis believe that the United States has no intention of ever withdrawing all its military forces from their country and that Washington's reconstruction efforts have been incompetent at best, according to a survey released here on Tuesday.

At the same time, however, only 35% of Iraqis - most of them Sunni Arabs - believe coalition forces should withdraw within six months, although if they did so, a majority said it would have a beneficial impact, as many prominent Democrats and other war critics in the US have argued.