US unpopular among key allies | csmonitor.com

America's flagging image around the world since the September 2001 terrorist attacks is crimping the Bush administration's ability to build a coalition for a possible Iraq war.

At the top of the US list of "essential" war partners, Turkey is a case in point. More than half of Turks see American antagonism towards Iraq not as resulting from the country's threat to world peace, but as "part of the US's war against Muslim countries.

According to the Pew survey, favorability towards the US has slid most markedly since 9/11 in key Muslim countries like Pakistan (-13 percent, to only 10 percent favorable), Indonesia (-14), and Kenya, where Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization is thought to be gaining favor, (-14). Opinion of the US in Turkey plunged from 52 percent favorable to 30 percent.

Despite Bush's public dismissal of polls, it appears the White House is interested in knowing what the world thinks of the US. After Pew director Kohut reviewed the center's findings with journalists Wednesday, he went straight to a meeting with Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist.

There was a huge surge of support after 9/11 but Bush's insistence of a war with Iraq more than lost it.