NO WONDER THE DEMOCRATS ARE TERRIFIED:

Across Nation, Critics of Bush Express Support for Iraq War (SONNI EFRON, September 15 2002, LA Times)

Interviews with Americans across the nation, as well as a spate of recent polls, indicate that support for military action against Iraq reaches well beyond those conservative Republicans most expected to back Bush. In late August, The Times Poll found that 59% of respondents believe the U.S. should take military action to remove Hussein from power. An even larger majority, 64%, said they would support a ground attack on Iraq if Bush decided to launch one, with 28% opposed.

The tallies indicate that a growing number of political moderates have concluded that there is no alternative to the use of preemptive force to prevent Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons or using its chemical and biological arsenal.

And Bush's move to shift the emphasis of his war on terrorism to Iraq from Afghanistan appears to be succeeding.

Asked whether Hussein or Osama bin Laden posed a larger threat to the United States, 40% named Hussein and 27% cited Bin Laden in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week. The poll of 1,011 adults was conducted from Sept. 3-5 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Moreover, 77% of poll respondents considered Hussein a serious threat; 58% thought that the U.S. was in a state of war; 84% agreed that the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks have their next attack planned or in the works; and 80% believed the United States should take military action to remove Hussein if it had evidence that the Iraqi leader is building or is about to build nuclear weapons. [...]

Stanley Wilson, 29, who works at a truck tire plant in central Florida's Oak City, thinks Bush "is out for the rich man." But when it comes to the need to fight America's enemies, with or without allies, Wilson is squarely behind the president.

"You get one terrorist, you got to get all of them and be done with it," he said. "Take, for example, you got two rattlesnakes in your yard. You want to get both of them or only one? You deal with it, and you don't have to worry about it coming back."

As for the lack of allies, he said, "They don't back us now, don't call us when you need us."

Wilson, a Democrat, expects that any war against Iraq would be over in about a month, and he is prepared for American casualties.

"Freedom is not a cheap crop to pick"...

Political parties that fall behind where the people are--even if the party is right and the people wrong, as was the case with the GOP opposing the New Deal and Great Society--quickly become minority parties and often remain that way for awhile. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 16, 2002 10:48 AM