War or peace - At holiday season, Americans reflect on Iraq

In the season of peace, at the Christmas-card perfect Bavarian village constructed in Chicago's Daley Plaza, David Mack talked approvingly of war.

"Yes, I think a war is coming, and yes, I think it's justified," said the 39-year-old businessman, as his wife and children enjoyed the creche and Christmas tree.

"I think it's needed to put a stop to what's going on in Iraq -- with the nuclear weapons and all that. They're just building up and building up ammunition on us, hoping to catch us asleep. I think now's the time to act," Mack said.

More than 1,700 miles away, Los Angeles transit worker James Coleman wasn't so sure. "I haven't seen a single reason to risk all the lives that are going to be lost," he said, at a subway station in the city's Koreatown district.

On the eve of Christmas and the promise of a new year, the United States girds for war. And its people question, protest or rely on faith in elected leaders -- while contemplating the hard truth that if we go after Iraq, sons and daughters will kill for their country and die for it.

President Bush says he possesses hard evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But the president has yet to publicly disclose it, and many Americans are leery of war.

According to a poll published this week by the Los Angeles Times, 90 percent say they don't doubt Iraq is developing those weapons. But without new evidence from U.N. inspectors, 72 percent -- and 60 percent of Republicans -- said the president has not provided enough evidence to justify starting a war.

The same poll -- which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points -- found a decline in support for a ground attack in Iraq, from more than 70 percent in January to 64 percent in August to 58 percent last week.

Americans favor getting rid of Saddam Hussein, said Dan Glickman, director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, but they are unwilling to do so without evidence that he poses a real threat to this country.

"People are going to start asking, 'Show me the evidence.' If you're going to risk American lives, you have to start answering those questions," said Glickman, a former Democratic congressman and secretary of agriculture.

And though most Americans know about Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and use of chemical weapons against his own people, Glickman says past actions do not prove current threats.

"Saddam is not the most lovable creature in the world. But you have to demonstrate that the danger is real and it is imminent," he said.

Said Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution: "Bush can't just declare war, he has to explain it. Because of the Gulf War, people know about Saddam Hussein, so from that point of view, the president has an easy sell."

In fact, more than 11 years after the first battle with Saddam during the first Bush presidency, some Americans see a second Gulf War as an inevitable continuation of the first.

"What the father started, the son wants to finish," said Antonio Maldonado, an 18-year-old freshman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "That's basically it, you know. It's part of the Bush legacy."

Retired Air Force Sgt. Daniel Kisco, his red truck decorated with Old Glory and dozens of pro-U.S. bumper stickers, said Saddam has been allowed to flout international restrictions on his country's military arsenal for too long.

"We need to get in there and kick some butt," said the Winter Springs, Fla., resident. "The president understands that we have to get in there and show the world that we aren't going to take their crap anymore. He just wants to make sure that we maintain our authority."

In Indianapolis, at Buzz Smith's military surplus store, where a poster of Uncle Sam greets the customers and conspiracy theories are as common as discount gas masks, there are no doubts: Saddam is a master of international terrorism, and war is both inevitable and necessary.

"Iraq is the kingpin of it all," Smith said.

But there has been a vocal opposition, in protests from Washington state to Washington, D.C., in numbers not often seen since the Vietnam War. Demonstrators carrying signs reading "No Blood for Oil" and shouting "No war with Iraq," descended on Vice President Dick Cheney's house in the nation's capital and heckled President Bush during a visit this fall to Trenton, N.J.

On Sunday, Chicago's top Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders led about 1,000 worshippers in an anti-war candlelight march. Religious groups -- including Bush's own denomination, the United Methodist Church, and America's Roman Catholic bishops -- have opposed any war.

The National Council of Churches, representing 36 Protestant denominations and 50 million Christians, bought a page in The New York Times imploring Bush to abandon military action. Common Cause also took out an ad challenging the president's position; among the signers were broadcaster Walter Cronkite, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Current governors, for the most part, have voiced little opposition. California's Gray Davis -- who decided he was a Democrat after serving in Vietnam and seeing war's disproportionate impact on the poor -- nonetheless supports the president.

"I know that when you are on duty halfway across the world, you want to know that your country and your president are going to stand behind you," Davis said in a televised interview.

And Congress, after initial skepticism from Republicans and Democrats, gave the Bush administration its approval to pursue military action against Iraq after closed-door intelligence briefings and public hearings.

But most of the public, it seems, has not taken a firm position.

While a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released last week showed 55 percent of Americans support military action, the same poll found that two-thirds of those who favor war and two-thirds of those who oppose it said their position could change, depending on what happens in Iraq in the next few weeks, as U.N. inspectors try to ferret out evidence of horrible weaponry.

Then there are those who say there is more than one way to topple a dictator.

On a recent, cold Chicago night, Paul Russell played Christmas carols on an old accordion in downtown's Daley Plaza.

"I think the president wants Saddam Hussein removed ... but why can't we do it another way? Don't tell me we can't afford hired assassins."

That said, he resumed his rendition of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

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Associated Press staff writers Ryan Lenz in Indianapolis, Danny Pollock in Los Angeles, F.N. D'Alessio in Chicago, and Hannah Lobel in Dallas contributed to this story.