In the week U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad and apparently vanquished Saddam Hussein’s regime from control of Iraq, Wisconsin residents heartily approved of President Bush’s actions against that country.

The latest Badger Poll, taken during the week network news was flooded with images of Iraqis and U.S. Marines working together to drag down a statue of Hussein in the streets of Baghdad, shows three of four state residents say Bush’s way of dealing with the Iraq situation was excellent or good.

The April poll, conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, reveals 80 percent of Wisconsinites feel Bush did the right thing when faced with the original threat of war, up from 65 in each of the two previous months. Two-thirds of those polled feel Bush did everything he reasonably could have done to avoid war with Iraq.

Donald Ferree, director of public-opinion research at UW, said that the fact the number increases might show that Bush’s war exceeded the public’s expectations.

“The general context of these numbers is that before the war broke out, about two-thirds were in favor of military action,” Ferree said. “What it certainly suggests is that there is not a disillusionment of the public going on. People did think it was a good idea for Bush to back up his threats with force.”

Ferree said the administration seemed to have avoided the principle of discount, which states that public opinion changes very quickly when expectations are not met, by being careful not to predict the length of the war in Iraq.

Even as Bush addressed the White House press pool Sunday at Fort Hood, Texas, he was careful not to extrapolate about when U.S. forces would be finished in Iraq, saying the work would be complete “when (Gen.) Tommy Franks says it’s complete.”

Consistent with Bush’s remarks since the onset of war, almost two-thirds of Wisconsin residents feel the long-term presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is very likely. More than a third of those polled before the war felt the conflict would last several months to a year.

Ferree said the public being conditioned to not expect a short war was also evident in the two-thirds majority of Wisconsinites polled who said they expected U.S. forces to be “tied up for a long time” in keeping order while Iraq’s government was rebuilt.

When asked whether the United States showing itself to be willing to use force to protect itself preemptively would make other countries respect it more or less, the polled split into thirds along the lines of “respect us more,” “respect us less” or “not much difference.”

Ferree said that statistic, coupled with the almost 50 percent of those polled who said the U.S. war would decrease the threat of terrorism in the world, showed many people felt war was a necessary and not regrettable action.

“Clearly there’s a general sense that the aims of the war were justifiable,” Ferree said. “Clearly we have a situation where people are saying the aims of the war themselves were worthwhile.”