10 Years Ago: Poll Found Most Blacks Opposing Iraq Invasion

As I continue to look back on coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq  11 years ago, I came across this NYT report from this week in 2003 (a few days into the attack) on a new Times/CBS poll measuring public support for war just after it began.  There's a lot to chew on but here are two highlights:

--You've no doubt seen all the recent media reports on how "everyone" backed the war so-don't-blame-us.  The poll, for one thing, finds quite a racial gap:  only about 4 in 10 blacks backed the invasion.

--After we went to war, some Americans were shocked that the Iraqis were mounting much of a resistance at all.   The number who thought the war (which would drag on for, oh, eight years) would go very easily was already plunging.

''I think I was living in a pipe dream thinking no one would get killed,'' Shirley Johnson, 79, a registered Republican from Davenport, Iowa, said in a follow-up interview. ''But all of a sudden people were getting killed, and I was horrified.''  Pam Wallman, 60, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said, ''I think the American public was duped into believing that our troops could just go in there, clean everything up and come home in 10 days.''

Americans said Mr. Bush had failed to give them enough information about how long the war might last, how much it might cost and how many Americans might die in the effort. They also said Mr. Bush had failed to detail how the administration would manage a postwar Iraq. 

Greg Mitchell’s new edition of So Wrong for So Long includes a preface by Bruce Springsteen, a new introduction and a lengthy afterword.