Memorial Day close to home this year

In Colorado Springs, Colo., soldiers returning from Iraq were showered with confetti blasted from rented canons this weekend.

In Lansing, Mich., the Memorial Day parade was dedicated to the memory of Pfc. Richard Rosas, a town hero who had returned from war in March with a Purple Heart - and was killed in Fallujah last week.

In Hartford, Conn., Saturday, volunteers at the state armory assembled 1,500 care packages for troops in Iraq, tucking lip balm, sunscreen, and snacks into care packages along with schoolchildren's letters and cartoons.

The long weekend had its share of barbecues and beach trips, but a rising death toll in Iraq and the uncertainties of a global war on terror punctuated the holiday with a more somber note. From Denver to D.C., Americans turned out in greater numbers to honor Americans who have died in combat, past and present. Even as a new World War II Memorial opened, the nation's newer scars were marked in public tributes and quiet remembrance.

A year ago, Memorial Day came on the tail of celebration: The US seemed victorious in Iraq; Saddam Hussein's statue had fallen; and many thought the worst of the conflict - and casualty count - was over. But Monday's services found a nation torn, with support for the war in Iraq eroding and new, more urgent warnings of terrorist attacks on the nightly news. Around the country, the intensity of feeling along parade routes and in the doleful notes of trumpets playing taps caught many all along the political spectrum by surprise.

• In Colorado Springs, Colo., home to 15,000 troops, 50 buses brought soldiers downtown. World War II planes and modern fighter jets zoomed overhead. Up the interstate in Denver, the annual parade drew its largest crowd in a decade.

• In Lansing, Mich., mourners of Private Rosas recently gathered at his mother's home, bearing candles and prayers as they lined the front yard in her working-class neighborhood and poked American flags into the grass. Apolonia Rosas sat in a patio chair beside an old oak tree, sobbing for her son.

• At 3 p.m. across America, train whistles blasted and baseball games paused in a national moment of remembrance.

More than 800 US troops have died in Iraq since the bombing of Baghdad in March of 2003, and most of them were killed after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations last May.

In a year-plus of fallen statues, fallen troops, fluctuating hope, and, most recently, gruesome images of prisoner abuse, support for the war has spiked, spiraled, and, increasingly, sunk. A Gallup poll this month showed 52 percent of those surveyed believed it was "not worth going to war" in Iraq - up from 42 percent last fall. In a CBS poll, 49 percent still say the US "did the right thing" by invading Iraq, but that's down from 63 percent last December. Now 46 percent believe the US should have stayed out of the conflict. In a Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll taken earlier this month, 55 percent of those surveyed supported US military action in Iraq, and 48 percent said the effort has helped make the world a safer place.

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