US voters grow sceptical of Bush decision to go to war

PUBLIC opinion favoured US President George W Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq about 2-to-1 soon after Saddam Hussein’s capture, but months of chaos and casualties have taken a heavy toll on public support for the war.

Now the public is evenly divided on whether the war was the right thing to do or whether it was a mistake.

Among those increasingly sceptical about the war are older people, minorities, people with lower incomes, residents of the North-East and Catholics, according to Associated Press polling.

The shifts in overall public sentiment reflect the difficulties in Iraq, including a death toll nearing 950 US soldiers, the violent insurgency against the new Iraqi government and US forces, and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, which was among the central justifications for Bush’s decision to go to war.

“It was a mistake,” said 73-year-old Mil Jenkinson, a retired schoolteacher and a Democrat from North Dakota. “There were no weapons of mass destruction. I keep thinking it’s not our place to rule the world. Everyone does not think our way of life is the right way. It’s arrogant of us to go into a country and tell them what kind of government to have.”

Even among those who maintain their support for going to war, urban battles and roadside bombs have caused a shift in perspective. For Jim Adams, a 42-year-old Republican from New Hampshire, the decision to use force in Iraq was right and he still supports Bush, but he says the follow-through in Iraq was lacking.

“I don’t think it was a mistake to go there,” Adams said.

“But we’ve gone down a slippery slope.

“We had good reason to go based on the evidence at the time, but we’ve gone in a direction we never intended to go,” he said. “We’ve alienated the population. We wanted the population to embrace our values, and we’ve done exactly the opposite.”

Almost nine in 10 Republicans still say it was the right thing to do. However, Democrats and independents lost enthusiasm for the war since Saddam was captured in December. Overall, about half in an August AP-Ipsos poll said they think the war in Iraq was the right thing to do.

About six in 10 feel Bush does not have a clear plan for bringing the Iraq situation to a successful solution, according to a recent Pew Research Centre poll.

In the August poll, those most likely to say the Iraq war was the right thing to do were Republicans, Southerners, those who earn more than $50,000 a year and young adults.

Yet among many different groups of Americans, a majority of people now say the war was a mistake.

Those groups include minorities (65%), North-Easterners (60%), Democrats (80%), people who make less than $25,000 a year (57%) and Catholics (51%).