As the President delivers his annual State of the Union message, 55% of the voting public favors a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq, believing the U.S. has accomplished all it realistically can in the Middle Eastern nation.

Many disagree that the enemy in Iraq is getting worn down and that the U.S. will eventually win the war. Just 40% agree with that statement, while 59% do not. Similarly, while 41% favor escalating the Iraq conflict, using more missiles and heavy artillery against insurgents – but a 56% majority opposes this approach.

The survey finds the nation sharply divided over the Iraq conflict, with 49% agreeing with the proposition that America cannot win the war in Iraq and that Iraqis should be left to sort out their own future without U.S. or allied intervention. However, just as many oppose that view.

Despite the misgivings of many about the war, a 53% majority of voters oppose an immediate withdrawal – although 46% favor this position.

The survey does find that the groups that supported President Bush’s 2004 re-election – including conservatives, rural voters, Protestants and evangelicals, regular churchgoers, men, the investor class and Republicans in general – are much more likely to favor continued involvement in Iraq and are more likely to reject arguments favoring withdrawal from the region. And NASCAR fans – one of the groups closely watched during the 2004 elections – are solid war supporters.

However, the President does not win the hearts and minds of a number of other groups, including moderates and liberals, large city dwellers, Catholics, women, non-investors, and households containing members of a labor union. And among a number of key swing constituencies, including small city residents and suburbanites, there are clear signs of fatigue with the war.

The President may also have his work cut out for him in retaining support on the subject from lawmakers who are eyeing a future White House run. Asked whether they would support a presidential candidate in 2008 who aggressively supports the Iraq War, 36% of poll respondents said they would. By contrast, 43% said they would instead support a 2008 presidential candidate who believes nothing more can be accomplished in the region and that a continued U.S. presence would be counterproductive.

The interactive survey of 13,456 likely voters nationwide was conducted Jan. 27 through 30. It has a margin of error of +/- 0.9 percentage points.

Americans' rejection of the Bush policy in Iraq is not the only factor behind the critical fall of the president's rating to 41% in the last 12 months. His administration's clumsy efforts following Hurricane Katrina, a series of corruption scandals involving the pillars of the Republican Party, disclosure of a network of secret prisons in Europe, and lastly the president's personal involvement in the anti-constitutional program of telephone tapping provided the background against which the president had to deliver a masterpiece address aimed at giving a new lease on life to his waning popularity.

Bill Clinton managed to appease and charm the enraged country at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Unfortunately, George Bush failed to repeat his predecessor's feat on January 31.

He did not tell Americans anything substantial about the painful Iraqi problem. He again announced an imminent victory of the U.S.-led military coalition. "I am confident in our plan for victory; I am confident in the skill and spirit of our military. Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning," Bush said. He argued, "A sudden withdrawal of our forces from Iraq would abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison (...) and show that a pledge from America means little."

In fact, he has said this so many times before that a repetition of these words did not warm the souls of tens of millions of Americans who share Cindy Sheehan's grief.

Worse still, Bush could not explain the shocking failure of the U.S. Middle Eastern policy of the last few days. The idea of spreading the American model of freedom there has resulted in the victory of a terrorist organization at the election in Palestine. Hamas would not have rallied such nationwide support but for the U.S. military campaign in Iraq.

The president called on Hamas to "recognize Israel, disarm and reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace." However, the audience seemed to think that it was too good to become reality soon.

Skeptics say that the U.S. State Department seems to have embraced the teaching of Karl Marx and is waiting for "the social being to determine consciousness." The American administration is waiting for Hamas fighters with portable mine-throwers to change under the weight of responsibility of power into harmless state officials in protective sleeves.

George Bush was fantastically lucky this time: he did not confuse Iraq and Iran. He described the latter as "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people."

The president deemed it possible to appeal to Iranians over the heads of their leaders, who were elected in a democratic, even if slightly faulty, procedure. He decided to speak directly to Iranian people: "America respects you, and we respect your country," he said. "We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom." Freedom from their current leaders, apparently.

That revolutionary appeal, just as the rest of the address, was broadcast live in Farsi, one of the main languages in Iran. After this faux pas, no one can encourage the Iranian leadership to continue nuclear program talks with the Untied States, Russia and the European Trio.

The rest of Bush's speech was full of generalizations and grandiose but, experts say, unsubstantiated projects. In particular, the president admitted to America's addiction to Middle Eastern oil and suggested replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025." Market analysts were shocked, as they know that in 20 years from now every fourth barrel of oil will be produced in the Middle East.

Bush praised the American economy, which "is preeminent," he said, "but we cannot afford to be complacent." In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors, like China and India, he said. Such deliberations sounded out of place at a time of a colossal budget deficit.

The first reactions of Bush's colleagues to his address are super-critical. No matter what he was speaking about - catastrophe in Iraq, the mess he made of the budget or the horrendous cost of corruption that is eating away at the administration - all of this spoke "more of a state of his personal self-denial," said Congressman Lloyd Dogget (D - TX).

The president repeated the proposal yesterday in a speech at the home of country music, the Grand Ole Opry, where he also urged Americans to reject isolationism in the face of global challenges.

"It seems like, to me, if you recognise the fact that being dependent upon oil is a problem for the long term, why don't we figure out how to drive our cars using a different type of fuel?" Mr Bush asked.

Michelle Robinson, the Washington director of the clean vehicles programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group, said: "That statement is one of the most important things he said. We haven't heard that from the administration before, and it's quite positive."

Reid Detchon, the head of the Energy Future Coalition, a joint pressure group of unions and environmentalists, agreed: "I think that its very significant. If someone raised in an oil patch says the country is addicted and puts ... emphasis on alternative fuels, it's important. I think six years is the right timeframe. It could be more aggressive, but it's reasonable. That's the step that will push ethanol forward as a full competitor with gasoline."

The president's promise to increase federally funded research into ethanol and other forms of clean energy by 22%, as part of a broader investment in the sciences aimed at maintaining America's competitive edge, was also well received by environmentalists. But some voiced concern that the sums of money involved were comparatively small by the standards of the federal budget: $59m (£33m) in extra funding for cellulosic ethanol and $54m for clean coal technologies. Democrats said that even after the 22% rise, the administration would only be spending as much on renewable energy research as the Clinton administration in 2000.

"It's the Bush administration and Washington Republicans who are addicted to oil, and this administration refuses to break the dependence that undermines our economy and threatens our security," Senator John Kerry, the Democrats' presidential candidate in 2004, said.

Mr Detchon said it was not necessarily the amount of money that would prove important, but how it was used. "These technologies are ready to move to a commercial scale. The key will be ... the right incentives to the private sector so these plants will be built," he said. "In six years, if we have eight or 12 plants, then we'll have a great programme."

The president's ultimate target of using alternative fuels to replace 75% of oil imports from the Middle East, may also amount to less than meets the eye, experts said. Only about 20% of US oil consumption comes from the region, so the savings, if the objective was met, would amount to only 15% of overall imports.

"It sounds quite grand," Ms Robinson said. "But there are bills in Congress with much more ambitious targets. And the only concrete thing he says he'll do is research and development. You can't transform transportation by R&D alone. You have to do something by legislation, regulation and concrete requirements."

The Bush administration has consistently resisted using government regulations as a means of cutting oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. It walked out of the Kyoto accord on global warming largely for that reason. In 2002 Senate Republicans, with White House backing, blocked a bipartisan bill proposed by Mr Kerry and John McCain, a moderate Republican, which would have imposed stricter fuel efficiency standards on the large SUVs preferred by US motorists.

US greenhouse gas emissions were running about 13% above 1990 levels in 2003, a significantly worse performance than most of the industrialised members of the Kyoto pact.

Dependence on oil imports has risen under the Bush administration from 53% of US consumption to 60%. But most environmentalists said Mr Bush's speech gave reasons for optimism. "He used the words 'oil addiction'", Ms Robinson said. "At least he admits we have a problem."

Explainer: ethanol

It was Henry Ford's original plan to run the Model T on ethanol, but when petrol won the battle for market dominance, America's slide towards oil dependence was perhaps inevitable.

More than 120 years later, the country is being asked to kick the habit, with the help of $59m (about £33m) President Bush has earmarked for research on environmentally friendly biofuels.

Weaning US car owners off petrol will have a significant impact on the environment. Of the 500m cars in the world, 220m are in the US, but only 2% of the nation's transport fuel is bioethanol, a clean alcohol made domestically by fermenting corn.

Research published last week in the US journal Science found that not only could bioethanol replace petrol with big energy savings, it would produce up to 15% less greenhouse gas emissions. The Deparment of Energy's goal to replace 30% of petrol with biofuel by 2025 could be achieved with little effort within a few years, according to researcher Dan Kammen at the University of California, Berkeley.

But the hurdles are significant. Brazil, the world leader in growing biofuels, spent 20 years coaxing industry and the nation towards bioethanol and only last year sold more "flex fuel" cars that run on petrol or ethanol from sugarcane, than conventional cars. Commercial plantations there grow 20 tonnes of biofuel crops per hectare.

In a recent review of biofuels, researchers at Imperial College London, found that the amount of biomass grown for fuel will have to at least double before it can make serious inroads on America's oil addiction.

Research is now aimed at finding ways to tweak the machinery of photosynthesis to make plants grow more efficiently, while genetic modification is being used to make microbes that can rapidly turn the cellulose in plants into ethanol.