As President Barack Obama sought Congressional backing for a military strike on Syria, a new national survey released today shows him swimming against a strong tide of public opinion from war-weary Americans, who are against the US getting involved in Syria's civil war.
Though eight in ten Americans believed that Bashar al- Assad's regime gassed its own people, the CNN/ORC International poll shows that a strong majority does not want Congress to pass a resolution authorising a military strike against Syria.
More than seven in 10 say such a strike would not achieve significant goals for the US and a similar amount say it's not in the national interest for the US to get involved in Syria's bloody two-year-long civil war.
The poll comes at the start of a pivotal week for the president. The Senate is expected to take up the resolution after returning from its month-long summer recess today and Obama does a round of interviews with the major broadcast and cable news outlets.
Amid a full-court press of briefings by White House officials, Obama will travel to Capitol Hill tomorrow to make his case with lawmakers hours before he tries to make his case to the nation in a prime-time address.
"Congressional approval would help Obama a little, but a majority would still oppose air strikes against military targets in Syria," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.
"If Congress authorises military action, 55 per cent of Americans would still oppose air strikes."
Fifty-nine per cent of people questioned say they don't think Congress should pass a resolution that would authorise military action against Syria for a 60- to 90-day period and bar the use of US ground troops, while about four in 10 approve of such a resolution.
The poll also suggests those surveyed who identified themselves as Democrats and Republicans don't see eye to eye on the resolution. Fifty-six per cent of Democrats think Congress should pass it, but only 36 per cent of Republicans and 29 per cent of independents say the same.
"Bringing Congress into the equation seems to have added a political dimension to the Syria debate," Holland said.
"Once Congress makes up its mind, however, the gap between Democrats and Republicans nearly vanishes."
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International on September 6-8, with 1,022 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
