Houston, Jan. 27 (PTI): A majority of Americans believe the United States is neither winning nor loosing the war in Iraq, according to a recent poll.

A recent Harris Poll findings regarding public attitudes on the situation in Iraq showed that as many as 52 per cent US adults held the attitude of "we're not winning and we're not losing."

Twenty-nine per cent felt that the US was loosing in Iraq while 10 per cent felt the US was winning.

However, while this suggests the US adult public thinks that perhaps things aren't quite as negative in Iraq, other data within this same survey still paint a very negative picture.

Most of the numbers are nearly as low as they have ever been in the course of more than three years.

The poll found significant differences by political party. Many Republicans (57 per cent) agreed the US was neither winning nor losing, though 23 per cent of Republicans believed the US winning and 11 per cent thought it was losing.

Conversely, about half of Democrats (49 per cent) thought America was losing and 43 per cent said the US was neither winning nor losing.

The survey was conducted just before the State of the Union address and seven in 10 (70 per cent) adults gave President George W Bush a negative rating on his handling of Iraq, while only a quarter (26 per cent) gave him positive marks.

These are virtually identical to a November 2006 assessment when the President also received a 71 to 26 per cent negative rating.

In the past few weeks, the Bush has also embarked on a major campaign to see his new Iraq policy of sending in more troops.

The "sell" may be working somewhat as more people (27 per cent) accepted the premise of sending more troops to Iraq for a few months.

In November, a lower 19 per cent agreed with this.

However, that being said, over four in 10 (44 per cent) thought a timetable should be set for the withdrawal of US troops. This is down from November, when 51 per cent felt this way.

The public is also split between those who believe that "it was a mistake to take military action in Iraq in the first place" (40 per cent; down from November's 42 per cent) and those who think it "was the right thing to do but that things have gotten off course" (41 per cent; virtually unchanged from 40 per cent in November). Only a small minority (12 per cent; similar to November's 13 per cent) believed that it "was the right thing to do and things are going reasonably well."

This survey also found that attitudes toward events in Iraq were still highly polarised by party. Fully 67 per cent of Democrats and 44 per cent of Independents thought that taking military action in Iraq was "a mistake in the first place," but only 12 per cent Republicans felt this way.

On the other hand, 57 per cent of Republicans (compared to 24 per cent of Democrats and 43 per cent of Independents) believed invading Iraq "was the right thing to do, but things have gotten off course there."