According to the latest New York Times poll, "two-thirds of those polled said the United States should reduce its forces in Iraq, or remove them altogether." The same number believes the war continues to go badly.

So why is the Times story about the poll headlined "Support in US for Initial Invasion has Risen, a Poll Shows?"

Presumably because the number of Americans who say the war was right to fight stands at 42 percent, compared to an all-time low of 35 percent in May. And those who think the war is going "very badly" has decreased from 45 percent earlier in the month to 35 percent today.

Promising news, one could suppose, for the Bush Administration. But the overall findings of the poll indicate a hardened and continued pessimism about the direction of the war, which is not at all reflected in the pro-war headline.

The Washington Post, in its own Iraq poll today, had a very different take.

"Overall attitudes about the conflict continue to be decidedly negative," the Post writes, "with more than six in 10 saying that given the cost, the war was not worth fighting."

Eight in ten Americans say Bush is not willing enough to change his policy, a 12 percent increase since December.

The Post headline: "Poll Finds Democrats Favored on War."

So much for the Times‘ alleged "liberal bias."