Americans' discontent with war growing [View All]

[steve2470]

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/12380533.htm

Poll: Most reject Bush safety argument

By Dick Polman

Washington Bureau



1/83/8

PHILADELPHIA | The fog of war has settled over the home front.

Bedeviled by the mounting casualties in Iraq and increasingly confused by the mixed messages emanating from war leaders, Americans in large numbers are losing confidence in the mission.

New polls report that, for the first time, a majority of Americans reject President Bush's contention that the war in Iraq is making us safer over here. Indeed, barring major immediate progress in Iraq, 2005 might be remembered as the year when public opinion went south and never came back - a mood shift roughly analogous to 1968, when domestic confidence in the Vietnam War began its irreversible slide.

There has long been public frustration about the gap between administration pronouncements and battlefield realities; witness Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's prewar prediction that the fighting "could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months," or the fact that 92 percent of all U.S. military deaths have occurred since Bush declared on May 1, 2003, that "major combat" was over.

But for a long time, the restive Americans tended to be Democrats who already disliked Bush or who never bought his war pitch in the first place. What's new today is that frustrations about the war are being voiced by those who backed the mission at the outset. These Americans - as evidenced in interviews by reporters from Texas to New York City during the past week - are increasingly alarmed by the facts on the ground and confused about the best course of action in the future.

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WOW !!!! In South Carolina no less.