Americans for the first time are raising doubts about whether the nation can accomplish its objectives in fighting terrorism at home and abroad, from capturing or killing Osama bin Laden to saving the international alliance from unraveling to protecting people from future attacks, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll shows.
Despite threats about anthrax unfolding virtually every day and little discernible progress in the air campaign against the Taliban, Americans are still offering President George W. Bush their overwhelming approval.
Bush's job approval rating, which soared after Sept. 11, stands firm at 87 percent. And Congress has an approval rating of 67 percent, the highest since The Times and CBS News began asking about it in the 1970s.
Even so, after six weeks in which people were not inclined to critique aspects of the government's response, there are stirrings of discontent that extend to how the nation is responding to domestic terrorism and to how it is handling the war.
The public is questioning whether the government is doing enough to forestall what it increasingly expects to be another terrorist attack in this country within months.
Fifty-three percent say another attack is very likely, up from 46 percent two weeks ago and 36 percent two weeks before that. Most people say they are expecting the attack to be in the form of bioterrorism.
These responses came before Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on Monday that new terrorist attacks were expected as soon as this week.
Yet more than half the public says the government in Washington -- as well as state and local governments -- - has not done enough to prepare for a biological attack.
And nearly half of Americans say the government is withholding information they need to know about the recent anthrax cases. More than a quarter say public health officials are wrong in advising people not to ask their own doctors for Cipro, an antibiotic used in treating anthrax.
While security has been tightened at airports, leading to a now-common sight of interminable lines, Americans are still jumpy about traveling on airplanes. They want the federal government to take complete control of hiring and supervising all airport security personnel.
The nationwide telephone poll of 1,024 adults was conducted Thursday through Sunday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Tom Cale, a poll respondent who sells cars in Fairmont, West Virginia, is among those who support the nation's leaders but has nagging concerns. "It's not that we don't have competent people in positions of authority," Cale, 50, said in a follow-up interview. "They just haven't written the book yet about the potential dangers that are out there."
Bracing for more terror, Cale said, "The next attack would be what you least suspect. It's going to be something that few people would see that would affect the most people, like sabotaging gas supply lines or taking out two or three main power stations."
Joan Kautz, 49, a rental car agency clerk in Linden, New Jersey, said: "With the added security at the airport, bioterrorism is the only way to get in here. That's why they've used the mail, and even now the government is not protecting our postal workers."
In one of the most striking shifts, only 18 percent of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence that the government could protect them from terrorism; a month ago, 35 percent had such confidence. A majority, 58 percent, said they had a fair amount of confidence. The rest had little or no confidence.
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