Many Bush Backers Balk At $87B To Rebuild Iraq

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. -- "People are losing confidence in the fact that the troops aren't coming home, and we should have gotten more help before going over there in the first place," said Martinsburg's mayor, George Karos, 72, a Navy veteran who owns one of the city's prime gathering places, Patterson's Drug Store. His reservations are reflected in national polls, which last week registered sharp drops in Bush's approval ratings, to 50 percent in the Gallup survey. The reason is apparent at almost every lunch counter and workplace in Martinsburg: Where Bush once drew support based on the simple conviction that he was right to take the fight against terrorism to the Middle East, now he's running up against another simple conviction, that US dollars should not be sunk into an overseas rebuilding project. Posted by Editor at September 30, 2003 10:38 AM