July 22, 2005 - According to the latest Harris Poll, the rating of President Bush's handling of Iraq continues to decline. Almost two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults now rate the president negatively. On almost all measures in this survey, the number of adults expressing negative views on Iraq has increased.

These are the results of a new Harris Poll of 2,339 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive(R) between July 12 and 18, 2005.

The main findings in this poll are:

* President Bush's 64 percent negative to 34 percent positive rating on the handling of Iraq is an increase in that negative rating from 61 to 37 percent in May.

* By 59 to 23 percent, U.S. adults are not confident that U.S. policies inIraq will be successful. This represents continued erosion in confidence from May when a 54 to 26 percent majority said that they were not confident.

* The percentage of adults who say that taking military action against Iraq was the right thing to do has remained steady (38% now vs. 39% in May). The percentage who thinks that this was the wrong thing to do has also remained steady (49 percent now vs. 48 percent in May).

* While 44 percent of adults think the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is getting worse, only 17 percent think things are getting better. A third (35%) feels that things haven't changed, similar to the percentage who felt this way in May (34%).

Recently, there has been speculation that perhaps the U.S. public has not been paying attention to the situation in Iraq. This latest survey suggests otherwise. More than eight in 10 (85%) U.S. adults say that they are paying at least a fair amount of attention to the situation in Iraq (29% say they pay a "great deal" of attention and 56% say they pay a "fair amount"). Fully more than a third (36%) thinks Iraq is moving in the wrong direction now, and a similar 37 percent thinks things are moving in the right direction-a less sanguine perspective than two months earlier. In May, though a similar percentage thought that things were moving in the right direction (39%), a much smaller percentage (29%) thought things were moving in the wrong direction. In these latest results, a significant number (28%) still say they are not sure (31% in May).