Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder

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.”

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The New York Times A Nation at War March 26, 2003
Opinions Begin to Shift as Public Weighs War Costs
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
Americans 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