Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, General David Petraeus noted “significant but uneven security progress” in Iraq and urged lawmakers not to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. Recent polls suggest that most Americans favor a withdrawal timetable, although not an immediate pullout. But confidence in U.S. military leaders remains high. According to a February Harris Interactive poll, Americans place more confidence in military leaders than they do in the leaders of any other institution that Harris asked about, including the Supreme Court and Congress. Fifty-one percent of Americans said they had a “great deal of confidence” in military leaders, compared to 8 percent who said that about leaders in Congress. The military was the only institution for which public confidence increased in the past year. Still, partisan differences remain sharp. Seventy-six percent of Republicans expressed a great deal of confidence in military leaders, compared to only 37 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of independents. Source: Harris Interactive, February 2008.