changing your mind about the war?

I can't help but imagine myself in the shoes of some Iraqi conscript, planted along the Kuwaiti border, terrified to his very bones.

a) The 'liberation of Iraq' line is noble but, call me cold and cynical, apparently not the real motivation for Bush n' Blair's strike. When has a country EVER attacked another primarily because they didnt like how that country was being governed?

b) I am fundamentally opposed to all dictatorships but the desire to see Saddam's regime overthrown is undermined by the feeling that the US/UK coalition has no right to interfere as they have done. This is the kind of belief that gets you hissed and jeered at by right wingers, and I'm not sure I'm completely committed to the idea because essentially it is the equivalent of turning a blind eye to a man getting brutally assaulted and robbed by another man on the other side of the street. The better thing to would be to intervene but to do it for the purpose of protecting the victim, not because you know if you take out the assailant you will get both his rewards and rewards from the assailant. Of course you could just call the police (United Nations) but sometimes the police cannot get there in time or they cannot do much about the crime...

Of course that metaphor is not suitable really because lives are being lost and entire societies are being threatened. so i wouldn't say I am in favour of the war but I have sort of accepted it as the only feasible way of getting rid of this particular dictator.

i'd better expand on that quick! I meant 'attacked despite seemingly being unprovoked directly or convincingly threatened somehow'. People continue to fail to see why Saddam is a threat now. If the Gulf War had been properly resolved then that would've made more sense. The provocation was in invading Kuwait - it was considered far more acceptable to retaliate as a result. Rules are rules etc. This time the rulebook really has been thrown out of the window by Bush. I just find THAT really hard to accept.

And while the troops haven't reached Baghdad yet, I can't say how I'll feel about the war after it all. But I've grown more against the war seeing how it has unraveled in the past week and a half, and not really getting the sense that all the horrible, horrible things that Iraq supposedly have actually exist.

But we'll see once we get to Baghdad.

Amateurist, you mentioned the "shoes" of a conscript. Everyone go check out the photo gallery at washingtonpost.com. Hit the photo tab, today's gallery, pic 16. (I'd post it but it's flash)

There's a sort of natural attitude that says something like: "I was unsure of this war and didn't think we should go into it. But if we're already doing it, it's too late -- let's go whole-hog and get it done." Surely there's a certain element of this in most people's thinking. For instance, if your objections to the war are that it would piss of the known world and devastate Iraqi civilians, there comes a point where we've already sort of done those things, so we'd better do the one good part and get rid of Hussein while we're at it.

My lack of conviction about this war mostly has to do with a lack of confidence that the aftermath and the rebuilding of the nation will improve many of the things we are supposedly hoping to improve. If the war process itself goes horribly, it will obviously make me even less supportive of this war. But if it goes sailingly well, that still isn't going to make me feel any better about the whole project -- not until well after it's over, when we can look at Iraq and around the region and around the world and really take stock of whether we've improved anything or not.

*I say 'kind of' because of course one can say 'Don't Know' but it feels a bit lame)

The bloke opposite me in my office has changed his mind - he was in favour of it before but now that soldiers are being killed he is starting to say it was a bad idea.

What the fuck did he think was going to happen ?!?!

Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

mericans 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.

anyone see the movie "next stop wonderland"?? (i think that was the one)

Haha, kinda easy to say that now, isn't it?

As I admitted above, yes it was some inexplicable blind faith, but hell... why else would an administration risk complete political assassination to take on something like this? And the war ain't over yet. But things are certainly NOT looking good for the Bush administration, given recent reports of how messy this thing is turning out.

Further on the flip, here's something I've never thought would happen.... my grandmother -- a woman who SENT NIXON A LETTER OF SUPPORT AND CONDOLESCENCES after he resigned -- is willing to admit that she will be sorely disappointed in Bush if, indeed, the threats and reasons to take this Iraq issue to a full scale war proves unnecessary.

Now, none of you have met my grandfather, but I love her.. but this is a woman I could not have a political discussion with for decades because she disowned me for voting for Clinton.

So, heads are possibly turning even in the bowels of the Republican fort, ladies and gents.

No, this came from my own brane.

Yep, I am for impeachment. And if that's not possible, then I will be encouraging everyone to vote in 2004.

I agree that a hurried Yes or No often doesn't do justice to one person's thoughts or feelings on a particular issue. And it seems right that a lot of people are plumping for an answer to avoid simply saying "Don't know". But are you suggesting that these people's responses (whether they be pro-war or anti-war) are worthless as indicators of public opinion?

I'm interested to hear these arguments, as the process of polling is now such a major part of political life.

Have many people read
this

Both also refused to speculate about how long the war would take, with Mr Bush simply repeating: "However long it takes. However long it takes."

One reason is that some units of the Iraqi army are going to fight to the death in terrain that they exist to defend.