Poll: Signs of Doubt Cloud War on Terror

Greg Klein of Fort Collins, Colo., is interviewed by the Associated Press, concerning the anniversary of 9-11, Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006 in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass) (Nick Wass - AP)

The big question for Karen Brown of Gainesville, Va., is whether the U.S. efforts are making a difference.

"Things are moving very slowly and not going very well," said Brown, a freelance writer in Northern Virginia. "There's Osama bin Laden still running free. We're deeper into Afghanistan and deeper into Iraq. I don't see any end to it."

Not everyone agrees the war in Iraq is central to the war on terror, as the Bush administration maintains. Six in 10 polled think there will be more terrorism in this country because the U.S. went to war in Iraq. Some feel strongly that the two wars are separate.

"They've been successful in the war on terrorism as long as you distinguish between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism," said Eva Washington, a semiretired nurse from Washington, D.C. "We allowed Iraq to become a home to terrorists by going over there."

And they are divided about whether they are losing personal freedoms, according to polling done between Aug. 7-17 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"I think there's a fatigue about the price of doing these activities," said Robert Blendon, a specialist in public opinion at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "There's also a concern about the competency of how well we're doing them."

Some of the divisions are from political differences. For example, Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to think the cost of the terror fight may be too high and twice as likely to think Iraq is making terrorism worse. And this comes when the nation has gone five years without an attack _ possibly making the terror war seem less urgent to some.

Popular support for the war on terror helped neutralize opposition to the Iraq war for a long time, said political analyst Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. "Now the negative effect of Iraq is dragging down support for the war on terror," he said.

Objections to the U.S. policies include invading Iraq without sufficient support from allies, faulty claims of weapons of mass destruction and holding "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo for many months without trial.

Some say they're worried that terrorists are recruited faster than they can be captured or killed.

"I am very concerned that if you get one terrorist faction, then another one steps up," said Carla Sanda, a meeting organizer from Las Vegas. "I'm very concerned this is going to be the world my grandchildren are going to be faced with."

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AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this story.

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