AND FROM THE LEFT WING NUTS IN ENGLAND COMES THIS GEM WHICH HAS THE DU SO HAPPY.
Americans losing faith in Bush on Iraq
Matthew Engel
Saturday August 24, 2002
The Guardian
President George Bush found himself dealing with an unaccustomed degree of dissent yesterday with the publication of a poll showing growing opposition to an invasion of Iraq and a near-riot outside the hotel in Oregon where he was speaking.
The poll results, showing a bare majority of Americans in favour of using ground troops to attack Iraq, were published after the Portland police used pepper spray to break up a demonstration outside the site of a Republican party fundraising rally.
About 500 protesters were ordered to move after they pushed down a barricade. Riot police moved in, using the aerosol sprays and pushing the protesters with batons.
The protest, a rarity on this scale in American cities in the past 20 years, was held after Mr Bush announced his new plan to loosen controls on logging in national forests.
The demonstrators were protesting against this policy and the plan to invade Iraq. Some carried placards saying "Drop Bush, Not Bombs". There were five arrests.
Electorally, Oregon is one of the most closely contested states in the country, but Portland is a famously liberal city with a strong contingent of activists and ageing hippies - Mr Bush's father used to refer to it, oddly, as "Little Beirut" - and the demonstration does not necessarily signal a return to more combative times in more typical American cities.
None the less, yesterday's events were the most visible sign of angry dissent in the US since the initial post-September 11 activism on some campuses was drowned by the tidal wave of patriotism.
The poll, published in USA Today, showed 53% of Americans answering yes to the question "Should ground troops be sent to the Persian Gulf to remove Saddam Hussein from power? and 41% against.
This contrasts with the majority of 61-31 when the question was asked two months ago and 74-20 in November.
Some analysts believe this is still provides a satisfactory base on which to swing support behind the president, as is traditional when war actually breaks out.
The poll also showed that 94% believe that President Saddam either has weapons of mass destruction or is developing them, 86% believe he is supporting terrorist groups intending to attack the US, and 53% believe he was involved in the September 11 attacks.
The president's own popularity rating is now 65%, still strong but no longer sensational.
But there are growing signs of White House frustration with its inability to take command of the Iraq argument. The president's normally imperturbable spokesman, Ari Fleischer, has attacked reporters for being obsessed with the subject in their coverage of Mr Bush's meeting with his defence team in Texas on Wednesday.
"It reached an absurd point of self-inflicted silliness that goes beyond the usual August hype," he said. "There have been meetings about Iraq in the past, there will be meetings about Iraq in the future." This one, he said, was not such a meeting, "and the press didn't care".
He added: "The president's opinion is the press looks silly."
This sort of attack suggests that Mr Fleischer's own iron grip on Washington news management is beginning to falter. Given the conflicting signals about Iraq coming from the administration, his job is certainly getting harder, and his line has to jostle increasingly with contrary voices.
The latest comes from Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's secretary of state, who told the News Hour programme that Iraq was "not a direct threat to the United States" and that sanctions were effectively containing President Saddam.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,779999,00.html