Global Policy Forum

By James Doran and Tim Reid

The 32-year-old husband of Stephanie Richards is serving in the Third Army Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, and recently had to shoot an Iraqi who ignored his warnings.

She admits to growing doubts about the course of the conflict. "I think initially it was going very well," she told The Times from her home on the Fort Carson army base in Colorado yesterday. "Now it is a little bit up in the air. It is not clear how it is going now."

Mrs Richards did not expect the Iraqis to be so vehemently opposed to the US presence. "My husband goes over there and puts his life on hold for people he doesn't even know and all they are doing is throwing rocks at him and killing his friends. I am a little perturbed by that," she said.

Nor does she have any idea when her husband might come home. "First we hear he will be back in August, then December, now we hear he will be back next April. So you just don't know. I often wonder when all this will end. I think about that a lot."

Mrs Richards is not alone in her misgivings. As the number of dead and wounded US servicemen in Iraq rises, public support for America's intervention in Iraq is beginning to fall quite sharply.

A Gallup poll conducted for USA Today and CNN yesterday showed 42 per cent of Americans now think things are going badly in Iraq, up from just 13 per cent in early May. Only 56 per cent now believe it was worth going to war in Iraq, down from 73 per cent in April.

On Monday Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, denied that Iraq was becoming a "quagmire". When one reporter mentioned Vietnam, he cut her off, saying: "There are so many cartoons where people, press people, are saying, ‘Is it Vietnam yet?' hoping it is and wondering if it is. And it isn't. It's a different time. It's a different era. It's a different place."

But yesterday was one of the worst days of bloodshed since Baghdad fell. Six US soldiers were wounded in two attacks on military vehicles. US troops shot and killed four Iraqis at checkpoints. Ten Iraqis died in an explosion at a mosque in the restive town of Fallujah. Angry townspeople blamed the blast on an American missile and the coalition blamed hidden explosives. Yet another attack by unknown assassins killed the head of Saddam Hussein's tribe near Tikrit.

After meeting Paul Bremer, the chief US administrator in Baghdad, a delegation of US senators said the American public had to prepare for a long struggle before troops could be withdrawn.

"The American people are going to have to adjust . . . to the fact that things can get worse before they get better," said John Rockefeller, a Democrat. "We are here for a long haul."

But relatives of the 22 servicemen who have lost their lives since the war officially ended still remain surprisingly supportive. Kelli Broomhead's husband, Sergeant Thomas Broomhead, 34, was killed when his armoured vehicle platoon was ambushed on May 27 — the day after Memorial Day. He left three children — Jacob, 11, Zachary, nine, and Jason, seven — and was also a member of the Third Army Cavalry Regiment, which has lost ten men since the fall of Baghdad.

"When my husband left we knew it was going to be long and we knew it was going to be dangerous and we knew it was going to involve peacekeeping," Mrs Broomhead said yesterday. "I'm not happy our troops are still in harm's way, but we have to support them. They are doing their job."

She added that there was no rule book written for those ordered to keep the peace in a war-torn country such as Iraq, but that the army and her husband had prepared for the worst. "Of course it was a shock even so," she said. "It was the last thing I ever wanted to happen."

The mood at Fort Carson is stoic and supportive. "People here have been so good. Fort Carson is a wonderful base. They are family to me."

But Mrs Broomhead would not answer the question posed in yesterday's Gallup poll. "If I was asked, ‘How do I think the war is going?' I would not answer," she said. "I want nothing more than for this not to happen to any more families. But I know I cannot bring them home, so we have to support them while they are there."

Sergeant Broomhead's brother Mike, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, is equally supportive of the war and the troops. "I think we knew that it would get more dangerous after the war had ended. And I did think that it might be this bad," he said. " He has no fear that the situation in Iraq could become another Vietnam, with public opinion turning hostile.

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