Iraqis: 43% say Iraq is going well while 17% of americans say USA on right track

An Ipsos poll indicates that 17% of Americans feel that the United States is on the right track

An opinion poll in February, found that 43% of Iraqis felt that things were going well in Iraq So more than twice the percentage of Iraqis are polling positively about their country versus the percentage of Americans who are polling positively about the USA.

Progress in various areas, such as the economy and security, and actions by the Government of Iraq (GOI) have improved the situation in Iraq. An opinion poll conducted in February found that 43% of Iraqis thought that things were going well in Iraq, up from 22% in September of 2007. The rising price of oil combined with improvements in production has given the GOI more money to spend than before the First Gulf War and the subsequent embargo of Iraqi oil. This increase in revenue has not yet led to noticeable positive change in public services and economic growth remains constrained by the lack of skilled employees in both the public and private sectors; the middle class makes up much of Iraq’s refugees and internally displaced. However, 12 million Iraqis now use cellular phones and 261,000 are Internet subscribers, both of which were negligibly by Iraqis prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Foreign oil companies, with both capital and technical expertise, could feasibly extract an additional 3.5 million barrels of oil, adding 4% to the global supply of crude. While Iraq’s oil infrastructure is aging and in need of a multi-billion dollar investment to contemporize it, Iraq sits atop the world’s fourth largest oil reserve, a fact which appeals to investors

.

FURTHER READING
The Economist magazine summarizes the mostly improved Iraq situation