WASHINGTON , June 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake that made the nation less safe, amid estimates that the war cost each American family some 3,500 dollars, press reports said Friday, June 25.

For the first time since the invasion of the oil-rich Arab country, 54 percent of the 1,005 Americans interviewed in a USA Today/CNN/ Gallup poll said it was a mistake to send US troops to Iraq , compared to 41 percent three weeks ago.

Most of those polled, 55 percent, also said they do not believe the invasion has made the United States safer from "terrorism" - rejecting an argument that President George Bush has repeatedly advanced in his rationale for the invasion, CNN said on its website.

The invasion’s original justification was to stop Iraq from allegedly deploying weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found.

The findings mark the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans called a major deployment of US forces a mistake, USA Today said.

"Losing confidence"

The American daily expected the findings to challenge Bush's plans to keep thousands of US troops in Iraq even after the hand-over of power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

"The American people are losing confidence" in the invasion, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright said in a conference call arranged by the campaign for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Albright said Bush has a "credibility issue" over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or ties between the 9/11 attackers and Saddam Hussein.

Last week, the independent commission investigating the attacks said it found "no credible evidence" of a link, refuting a claim exploited by the administration to justify the invasion.

Still, 44% of those surveyed say they think Saddam was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The new poll also found Bush in a statistical dead heat with Kerry.

It puts more pressures on Bush, a few days after a cohort of former American diplomats and military leaders said his policies have weakened American national security, led the country to ill-planned and costly war and fanned anti-American sentiments by relying on military force and disdaining the UN.

Hefty Coasts

The poll came as a new report by two American thinktanks unveiled that the United States has spent more than 126 billion dollars on the Iraq invasion, costing every American family an estimated 3,415 dollars.

The report, published by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus on Thursday, June 24, and carried by the Guardian, predicted that the annual costs of the invasion would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million American citizens who lack medical insurance.

On top of the 126.1 billion dollars invasion spending approved by the Congress to date, another 25 billion dollars will likely be spent by the end of this year, it added.

Titled "Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War", the study also referred to the human costs.

As of June 16, before the Thursday nationwide attacks, up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or resistance fighters had been killed, it said.

The death toll among US-led troops was 952 by the same date, of which 853 were American, some 694 of which were killed after Bush declared the end of major combat on May 1 last year.

Between 50 and 90 civilian contractors and missionaries and 30 journalists have also been killed.

"We are paying this enormously high price for failure," Phyllis Bennis, the report's lead author, was quoted by the British daily as saying.

"It's not as if we are becoming more safe. It's not as if we are bringing peace to Iraq or democracy to the Middle East ."

There was no immediate response to the report from the White House, but the administration has insisted it will stay in Iraq .

Reports said the US central command had put 25,000 more troops allegedly on standby in anticipation of an upsurge in attacks after the power transfer.