-Caveat Lector-
http://truthout.org/docs_03/032803D.shtml
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Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder
New York Times
Wednesday 26 March 2003
Americans say the war in Iraq will last longer and cost more than they
had initially expected, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News
poll. The shift comes as the public absorbs the first reports of allied
setbacks on the battlefield.
The percentage of Americans who said they expected a quick and
successful effort against Iraq dropped to 43 percent on Monday night from
62 percent on Saturday. And respondents who said the war was going "very
well" dropped 12 points, to 32 percent, from Sunday night to Monday
night, an erosion that followed an increase in allied casualties and the
capture of several Americans.
The poll also found an increase in the respondents who fear an
imminent retaliatory terrorist attack on American soil, now that images of
the allied assault on Baghdad have been televised around the world,
though two-thirds of respondents said the nation was adequately prepared
to deal with another terrorist strike.
At the same time, President Bush's campaign to remove Saddam Hussein
from power is producing sharp fissures at home.
The poll found that black Americans are far more likely than whites to
oppose Mr. Bush's policy in Iraq. They are also much more likely to say that
the cost of ousting Mr. Hussein was too high, as measured by the loss of
life.
Over all, with the war not even a week old, the nation's opinion about
the conflict appears to be in flux, driven by an intensity of coverage that
has allowed television viewers seemingly to follow every move from their
living rooms, and in an environment where many Americans say they remain
unsure of Mr. Bush's rationale for the conflict.
Indeed, the Times/CBS News Poll found that the number of Americans
who expected the war to be won quickly dropped 9 points from Saturday
to Sunday, and 10 more points from Sunday to Monday. Those shifts
coincided with television coverage of prisoners of war and battlefield
casualties that seems to have caught at least some Americans —
accustomed to the relatively bloodless victory in Afghanistan last year — by
surprise.
"I think I was living in a pipe dream thinking no one would get killed,"
Shirley Johnson, 79, a registered Republican from Davenport, Iowa, said in
a follow-up interview. "But all of a sudden people were getting killed, and I
was horrified."
Pam Wallman, 60, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, "I think the
American public was duped into believing that our troops could just go in
there, clean everything up and come home in 10 days."
Nonetheless, support for both the war and for the president, who has
kept a low profile after announcing the invasion last week, remains high;
Mr. Bush's job approval rating is now 60 percent. Still, Americans said Mr.
Bush had failed to give them enough information about how long the war
might last, how much it might cost and how many Americans might die in
the effort. They also said Mr. Bush had failed to detail how the
administration would manage a postwar Iraq.
The nationwide poll of 2,383 adults was taken from Thursday through
Monday. It was designed to take into account of daily changes in opinion.
The margin of sampling error for the entire sample was plus or minus two
percentage points. The margin of error is larger when measuring smaller
groups, like blacks, or when chronicling one- or two-night shifts in opinion.
A Times/CBS News poll last week found evidence of divisions between
Democrats and Republicans over the war. This latest poll found even
sharper differences on the issue between two other groups: blacks and
whites. Blacks Americans are far more likely to oppose the war than both
white Americans and white Democrats, and are correspondingly unhappy
with Mr. Bush's job performance.
While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military
action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported
that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of
what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of
blacks.
The findings reflected directly on Mr. Bush's standing among African-
Americans. Thirty-four percent of blacks said they approved of the job he
is doing, compared with 75 percent of whites.
The finding comes as a number of black political leaders have been at
the forefront of the antiwar movement, arguing that young black men and
women would be disproportionately represented on the front lines, and
that the war would drain federal money that should be spent on domestic
programs.
"I have a sick feeling about all the young lives that are going to be
destroyed," said Geraldine Hunter, 75, a black Democrat in Cleveland. "I
don't know why Bush was in such a hurry to go to war."
Latifa Palmer, 29, of Chino, Calif., who is also black, said: "If you don't
mess with them, they won't mess with us. Bush telling Saddam to leave his
country would be like Saddam telling Bush to leave his country."
Support for Mr. Bush and the war remains high. By 70 percent to 24
percent, Americans believe that the United States did not make a mistake
getting involved in Iraq. But there has been a measurable decline in the
national confidence that was on display last week. On Saturday, 53
percent of respondents said the war would be over within weeks; by
Monday, only 34 percent of respondents said it would end that soon.
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© Copyright 2003 by TruthOut.org
Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article
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careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with
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from the Kalama Sutra
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