Poll: Half of Americans want troops home from Afghanistan sooner

PRINCETON, N.J., March 15 (UPI) -- Fifty percent of Americans say they think U.S. troops should leave Afghanistan sooner than the end of 2014 as now planned, Gallup said Thursday.

Twenty-four percent of poll respondents said the current withdrawal timetable should remain in place while 21 percent said U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan as long as necessary to complete the mission, results of the Gallup-USA Today poll indicated.

The poll was conducted a few days after a U.S. serviceman went on a shooting rampage killing 16 Afghan civilians. The shootings Sunday were the latest in a series of troubling behavior by U.S. service members in Afghanistan, including the burning of Korans and urinating on corpses of Taliban soldiers.

About one in three respondants said their opinions about how long the United States should remain in Afghanistan changed because of recent events, while 60 percent said their views had not changed, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said.

Fifty-nine percent said they still think going into Afghanistan was the right thing to do, results indicated.

Results are based on nationwide telephone interviews with 1,006 adults conducted Tuesday for the Gallup Daily tracking survey. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.