Mistrust of U.S. Abroad Rising Fast: "Mistrust of the United States, particularly U.S. President George W. Bush, has grown steadily in western Europe over the ten months, while anti-American sentiment in the Arab world remains pervasive, according to a major new public-opinion poll of nine countries, including the United States, by the four-year-old Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) released here Tuesday.
Large majorities in each of the eight foreign nations surveyed believe Washington pays little or no attention to their country's interests when making its foreign policy decisions, according to the latest report sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Majorities ranging from 50 percent (Britain and Russia) to 67 percent (Morocco) said they believed the impact of the Iraq war hurt, rather than helped, the global efforts to stop terrorism, while between 45 percent (Britain) and 78 percent of people (France) outside the U.S. said they had lost confidence in the trustworthiness of the U.S. as a result of the Iraq war.
Moreover, significant majorities in France (82 percent), Germany and Jordan (69 percent), Turkey (66 percent), and Russia and Pakistan (61 percent) said they believed that U.S. and British leaders deliberately lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the war, as opposed to having been given bad intelligence. In Britain, 41 percent believed that they lied, while in the U.S. the percentage was 31 percent.
''The credibility of the United States is sinking and the numbers who believe that Bush and Blair lied to them is incredibly serious,'' noted Albright. "
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