Unease over war grows in Stoddard County

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. -- At first glance, Bloomfield seems like the kind of place that would be a stronghold of support for the war in Iraq, with its veterans cemetery and patriotic museum dedicated to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

But it doesn't take many conversations at the museum or at the Town & Country Supermarket on the edge of town to sense discontent and frustration with the war, even in politically conservative Southeast Missouri.

"I feel like it's been dragging on too long," said Connie Dunning, the store's 51-year-old night manager. "We're losing a lot of boys to something that should have done been solved a long time ago."

U.S. Rep Jo Ann Emerson earlier this month was part of a group of about a dozen moderate House Republicans who gave President Bush unusually frank assessments of the war's progress -- and its effect on voters -- during a private meeting at the White House.

Emerson wouldn't reveal her comments to the president, saying only she was candid in expressing her "real anger" that both Republicans and Democrats were allowing politics to fuel the war debate.

A car drove along a road lined with American flags Thursday in Bloomfield, Mo. A sense of discontent and frustration with the Iraq war, even in this politically conservative area, is growing. (JEFF ROBERSON ~ Associated Press)

"We're in this big old game of rhetoric and we have poor soldiers being caught right in the middle of it," she said. She said after the meeting she couldn't "abide the way this war is being conducted."

Emerson said it is clear that even in her mostly rural district, patience is running thin.

"I hear it on the street when I am home; I read it in the mail," Emerson said. "I think people are very frustrated, particularly because it doesn't seem like the violence is abating."

Emerson was among a dozen members of Congress targeted by retired generals in an ad campaign this month. They said the politicians can't support Bush's Iraq policies and still expect to win re-election.

When Congress voted Thursday to finance the Iraq war through September, Emerson didn't vote.

Emerson might seem an unlikely war critic. Voters in the 8th District have been far more supportive of the war than residents of metropolitan areas like Kansas City and St. Louis, said Ken Warren, a Saint Louis University political scientist who conducts periodic polls of voter attitudes in Missouri.

Support for the war has been battered by continuing casualties and scandals like the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Warren said.

"It's not just one thing. It's the whole disastrous ambiance of the whole war that has caused Americans to throw up their hands in protest," Warren said.

Support for the war in rural areas hovered around 75 percent during the 2004 presidential election, Warren said. Since that time, it has dropped to just above 50 percent, he said.

Jackson resident Jim Hochberger said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq because they had already accomplished the original mission of deposing Saddam Hussein.

"Once that was done, our job should have been over with. Now it's a civil war," Hochberger said.

At the Stars and Stripes Museum, 22-year-old historical intern Amanda Russell said she had more ambiguous feelings.

"I guess if we're there, we might as well finish what we started. We don't want to leave it in chaos," Russell said.

But 87-year-old Hugh Ley of Bloomfield said he's had enough.

"I don't support it at all," he said. "I'd like to see them get out of there."

Emerson said she wants Bush to increase diplomatic efforts, but she won't push for a troop withdrawal. She won't make a decision on that topic until September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress whether the Iraq strategy is working and whether course corrections are due.

"I am hopeful that he will be brutally honest," she said.

On the Net

Stars and Stripes Museum/Library Association: www.starsandstripesmuseumlibrary.org/

U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson: www.house.gov/emerson