Polls show more voters doubting war effort
WASHINGTON -- Nine months of chaos and casualties in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's capture have taken a heavy toll on American opinion of President Bush's decision to go to war.
Last December, when Hussein was caught, public support for Bush was 2-to-1 in favor. Now the public is evenly divided on whether the war was the right thing to do, according to an August Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Older people, minorities, people with lower incomes, residents of the Northeast, and Catholics are among those increasingly skeptical of the war effort, according to AP polling.
Public sentiment shifts reflect difficulties in Iraq, including a death toll nearing 1,000 US soldiers, violent insurgency against the new Iraqi government and US forces, and failure to find weapons of mass destruction, one central justification for Bush's decision to go to war.
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 Center 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 percent), Northeasterners (60 percent), Democrats (80 percent), people who make less than $25,000 a year (57 percent), and Catholics (51 percent).
Last December, 56 percent of seniors said the war in Iraq was the right thing to do and 40 percent disagreed. Now, six in 10 say the Iraq war was wrong.
While the number of people who are dubious about the Iraq war has grown over the past eight months, since spring, just over half in various polls have said they support staying in Iraq until it is stabilized.
The most recent AP-Ipsos poll of 1,001 adults was conducted Aug. 3-5 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups like older Americans.
