A policy of containment does not have the finality of a policy of overthrow. Another official said the president's failure to state the case for limited military action more clearly was because diplomacy remained a live option for defusing the crisis as long as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan was in Baghdad. We're not going to know for several days which fork we're on. . . . The public case is much easier to make once you understand what you're doing. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed 63 percent of those surveyed support bombing of Iraq unless the Iraqis stop interferring with U.N. inspectors.
Men are far more supportive of military action than women.
But a Newsweek poll released yesterday showed minimal support for the limited airstrikes. Given a choice of that option, an all-out air and ground assault to eliminate Saddam Hussein and his weapons, or continued diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to let the inspectors do their work, only 18 percent selected limited airstrikes. Levels of support for Clinton are nearly identical to those for President George Bush on the eve of the Gulf War in 1991. The dilemma was on vivid display at a televised forum at Ohio State University last week when Clinton's top foreign policy advisers found their policy picked apart simultaneously by people who questioned what gave Clinton the moral right to launch attacks, and others who worried those attacks would not be robust enough to really damage the Baghdad regime. The question is, where do you find ourselves six months or a year from now.