The Empire 218

'EVEN MORMONS JUMPING OFF BUSH BANDWAGON AS WAR TAKES ITS TOLL
By Bill Gallagher

DETROIT -- Iraq is lost militarily and politically. Even the Mormons are now abandoning President George W. Bush's mad war. That's akin to the Swiss Guard deserting and leaving the pope to fend for himself with the Vatican under siege.
Other than his own greedy family members, oil barons and military contractors, no group of Americans has stood so steadfastly behind the Bush administration than the members of the Church of Latter-day Saints.
Voters in Utah, the Mormon theocracy, have supported Bush with loyalty they usually reserve for the Brigham Young football team. In 2004, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's criminal enterprise got 71 percent of the vote in Utah.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a two-year compilation of Gallup polls showed staunch support among Mormons for the war in Iraq and Bush's handling of the violence: "American Mormons, more than any other religious group over that period, believed the United States was right to invade Iraq."
But a recent survey found "just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormons said they backed Bush's war management." Mormon support for the war has plunged 21 percentage points in just five months.
The defection of the Mormons is a seismic political event, and you can bet Bush's political brain, Karl Rove, turns pale when he sees those numbers. The head of the Church of Latter-day Saints is expressing doubts about war, and the mayor of Salt Lake City is leading the charge to impeach Bush.
LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley may have set the stage for the precipitous plunge in Mormon support for the war. Speaking to students at Brigham Young University last fall, Hinckley spoke of "the terrible cost of war."'

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