Iran or the US. Which do you feel a bigger threat to the Middle East? That is the question asked on a recent poll conducted world wide and the answer may shock some:

The world increasingly fears Iran’s suspected pursuit of a nuclear bomb but believes the U.S. military in Iraq remains a greater danger to Middle East stability, a survey showed on Tuesday.

As Washington campaigns to highlight the threat it sees from Tehran, the good news for the United States in a Pew Research Center poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries is that publics, particularly in the West, are worrying more about Iran.

The bad news is people worldwide think the U.S. presence in Iraq is an even bigger threat and support in most countries for President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism is either flat or falling.

So the rest of the world understands what the right wingers here at home can’t – that our presence in the Middle East goes against everything they believe in and is posing a bigger threat to the stability of the region. Of course Bush and his buddies in the right-wing talking pundit universe will dismiss this as some “Islamic sympathy” or something of the sort.