- CHICAGO (Reuters) - Crystal
Kent was jolted over the weekend by news of U.S. casualties and captured
soldiers, signs that the armor of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq might be
cracking.
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- "Now that you see POWs, it feels more real,"
Kent, 29, of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, said on Monday. "I didn't think
we'd lose this many people -- it seems like we're not as strong as I thought
we were."
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- The news of deaths and injuries sustained by U.S. and
British troops, images of Marines hunkered down in firefights, accounts
of Iraqi guerrilla-style attacks and televised snippets of frightened American
prisoners drove home the horrors of war for many.
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- "It doesn't appear to be as easy as the prewar rhetoric
had led us to believe," said Diane Gilleland, 56, a Chicago education
executive. "Since we're in it, I think we're going to have to push
on through, but I am concerned."
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- A random sampling found Americans fearful, angry and
even indignant at those who thought war would be easy.
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- "I have not been against the war and this has only
made my stance a little more aggressive," said Scott Kimball, as he
stopped in Louisville, Kentucky, to fill up his car with gas.
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- "War is hell. You can't say that the casualties
were unexpected. But still it's hard to watch," said Debbie Mintor,
a bank employee in Kansas City, Missouri.
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- "That's just a part of war, unfortunately. We had
to know this going in -- war is not pretty," Carolyn Witten, 57, a
visitor to Boston.
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- Few said they had changed their initial opinions about
the war, but some had steeled themselves for a longer conflict.
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- UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
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- "My customers say, 'Let's go get him (Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein) and get it over with as soon as possible.' But it's been
a little tougher than they expected it would be after the Gulf War,"
said Red Bullock, 67, a Cincinnati-area barber.
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- In contrast to the earlier war with Iraq that most Americans
witnessed from an aerial perspective, or in the aftermath with images of
Iraqi corpses, the current war can be viewed in real time with combat close
at hand.
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- Images of wounded U.S. soldiers carried off the battlefield
obliterated scenarios of a seemingly sanitized conflict like the 1991 Gulf
War, in which 293 U.S. soldiers died.
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- "I can't believe anyone is surprised by the casualties,"
said Nicholas Anton of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. "If anyone thought
the Iraqis were going to be flag-waving and welcoming us, they were wrong.
That crazy euphoria everyone had in the beginning was very short-lived,
and now people have to deal with the consequences of a real war."
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- Public opinions polls released on Monday showed a growing
proportion of Americans believed the war would not be as quick or as one-sided
as some had expected, with more than half of respondents to an ABC News/Washington
Post poll anticipating a significant number of U.S. casualties.
-
- Overall support for President Bush and his decision to
go to war remained strong, at nearly three in four of those in the ABC/Washington
Post survey.
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- Willy Dean, a 66-year-old Detroit cab driver, said he
knew the war would be difficult. "It's a small country but, hey, they
weren't willing to give up that easy."
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- Mike Mandarino, a 45-year-old New Yorker, was inflamed
by the television footage showing the U.S. prisoners of war.
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- "Line 'em up, all the Iraqi POWs," he said.
"Bang, bang, bang. We should make the whole area a parking lot and
open a nice multiplex (movie theater) there."
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- BARBARIC IMAGES
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- "As far as the images of POWs, they show how barbaric
these people are," said a Detroit shop owner, who gave his name only
as Gus.
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- "When someone in your community is lost or becomes
a POW, it changes your whole perspective," said Richard Dayoub, a
travel agent in El Paso, Texas, near Fort Bliss, the base for some captured
U.S. soldiers. "Hearing about the POWs yesterday underscores what
all of us recognize and not a lot of us discuss: It's dangerous to pursue
armed conflict."
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- "Whatever sympathy the Iraqis may have had may have
been lost" by exhibiting the POWs, said Juli Liebler, a police captain
in East Lansing, Michigan.
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- Iraqi television on Monday showed two men it said were
the crew of a downed Apache helicopter. The U.S. military had earlier acknowledged
losing one helicopter.
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- Robert Colson, a Vietnam veteran in Nashville, Tennessee,
said watching the war unfold was giving him "a lot of flashbacks,
knowing people are dying needlessly because diplomatic avenues were not
explored fully. I can't help but feel that (U.S. soldiers) are victims
of a government policy gone amok."
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- U.S. casualties so far in Iraq have been minuscule compared
to the 58,000 who died in the much longer Vietnam conflict, but veteran
Jerry Finley, 54, was braced for the worst for captured Americans. "All's
fair in love and war," he said. "They knew (Saddam) wasn't a
fair man from the beginning, why do you think he's going to be fair in
war?" (Additional reporting by Larry Fine in New York, Joyce Armor
in Chicago, Tom Brown in Detroit, Carey Gillam in Kansas City)
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