Public's doubts grow about Iraq war

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — As surely as sweet-corn stands and rolling farmland give way to the boxlike tract housing of new suburbs here, President Bush is losing ground on the battlefield of public opinion when it comes to the war in Iraq.

Even among Republicans who cheered the invasion of Iraq two years ago, and some who supported Bush's re-election and his exhortation to "stay the course," the ongoing loss of American lives without a clear course for withdrawal is taking a toll.

Growing opposition to the conflict, as well as a diminishing sense that it is making Americans safer from terrorism at home, is reflected in an array of recent opinion polls.

It also resounds in a series of interviews with voters, from the blossoming suburbs and withering steel-mill warrens outside Pittsburgh to the old cotton-mill country and military-minded precincts of South Carolina. Frustration and perplexity are voiced from Southern California to Terre Haute, Ind.

"Two or three years ago, when everything started, I thought it was a good idea," said Laura French, a Republican from Evan City, Pa. "But now I think enough is enough. It's time to come home."

It is not only the growing death toll that has eroded American support for the war, according to those interviewed, but also the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And it's the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"A couple of years ago, I thought the invasion of Iraq was justified," said Victor Diaz, a 30-year-old consultant in Los Angeles. "I believed the reports that stated Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and figured it would only be a matter of time before they were found."

More are skeptical

Growing doubts could make it difficult for Bush to maintain support for a continuing presence of nearly 140,000 troops.

A majority of Americans — 54 percent in the latest Gallup Poll — now say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. That's up from 46 percent who called the invasion a mistake in March.

At the outset of the invasion in March 2003, an overwhelming majority of Americans backed the war.

Now, even among war supporters, a shift in tone is emerging. In the gentle hills of upstate South Carolina, a deeply conservative bastion, the tradition of military service runs strong, and voters instinctively rally to support the troops.

Rural Pickens County has produced an extraordinary four winners of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest tribute for combat valor. And last year, people lined streets and waved flags for another local hero: Army Capt. Kimberly Hampton, 27, a former student-body president from Easley High School, killed when the helicopter she piloted was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq, in January 2004.

Outside a new red-brick library named in honor of Hampton, Steve Howard, a 33-year-old printer on his way to prepare a Sunday school lesson, allowed that mounting casualties and slow progress in Iraq have given him pause.

"I got my doubts about things. But I still support the president," Howard said.

Beth Padgett is editorial-page editor for The Greenville News in South Carolina, which editorializes in favor of the war.

"There is some unease" in the region, she said. "Everybody wants it to be over. There's been more sacrifice than most people, including me, thought there would be 2 ½ years ago."

Election implications

Republicans worry — and Democrats hope — that dissatisfaction with the war will spill into the 2006 congressional elections.

"It was an issue in the last election, and it will be in the next election," said Rep. Melissa Hart, a Republican representing a six-county swath of western Pennsylvania. She reported hearing concern from constituents but insisted they have not abandoned the cause.

"In light of the casualties and other concerns, people have an expected level of concern," Hart said.

But Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who in June proposed a resolution calling for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, spoke of a growing impatience even across conservative rural regions of northern Wisconsin that initially showed strong support for the war.

"It's one of the things I'm most certain of in my 23 years as a public official and after over 900 listening sessions or town meetings over 13 years," Feingold said. "This is one of the clearest messages I've ever received."

Yet polling and interviews suggest that while many support an eventual withdrawal of American troops, few favor an immediate pullout.

"We need to be there and we need to finish the job," said Debra Mathew, an office manager for a satellite-television company in Terre Haute, whose support for the war is unwavering.

Yet Mathew would find plenty of disagreement from passers-by on the grounds of the old limestone courthouse in downtown Terre Haute, where more than 400 names are chiseled into tall memorials commemorating those killed in two world wars, Korea and Vietnam — plus one name, that of 29-year-old Kyle Childress, who was killed last January in Iraq.

"I'm not sure going there was the right thing to do," Richard Liston, a 58-year-old Vietnam War veteran in Terre Haute, said of Iraq.

Calls for withdrawal are coming from some of Bush's staunchest supporters. Clyde Graham, a retired trucking-industry salesman in Wexford, Pa., twice voted for Bush.

"At the time, I felt we should stay the course," Graham said of the 2004 election. "I'm questioning that now."

The war cost Bush the vote of Graham's wife, Margaret, also a Republican, who supported Bush's election in 2000 but not his re-election.

"New things are cropping up all the time to frighten us," she said. "They don't frighten me, they annoy me — sending all our boys over there in a useless war."

Shared sentiment

Pennsylvania has lost 87 soldiers and Marines in Iraq.

One, Army Sgt. Carl Morgain, a 40-year-old National Guardsman, was killed by a car bomb on May 22. He came from fast-growing Butler County north of Pittsburgh.

Another, Army Spec. Shawn Davies, 22, died of a noncombat illness last year. He came from Aliquippa, west of Butler in Beaver County.

Beaver and Butler counties are very different. In Beaver County, home to hulking remains of steel mills along the cliff-lined banks of the merging Ohio and Beaver rivers, jobs have vanished and vacant stores line the long main boulevard of Beaver Falls.

In Butler County, the strip malls and franchise sandwich shops of Cranberry Township sprout across the street from old red barns.

The population of Beaver is shrinking, the population of Butler growing. Beaver voted for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, Butler for Bush.

Yet voices questioning the war can be heard in both places.

Ruth Carlson of Aliquippa, a Navy veteran, voted for Bush in 2000. So did her husband, an Air Force veteran. But neither voted for Bush in 2004.

"We usually vote Republican," Carlson said. "Come around this time, we couldn't vote for [Bush]. ... If they came after my son, I'd have to get him out of the country. We don't want our child going over there and dying for nothing."