Administration's terror ratings drop; military's remain high

More than half of Americans continue to give the Bush administration high marks for its handling of the events surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, although a few of the names polled have lost support in the year since ABC News last asked the question.

Fifty-five percent said the Bush administration had done a "good" or "excellent" job dealing with the events of Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism, down 18 points since September 2002. Fifty-four percent said the same about Attorney General John Ashcroft (down 13 points from a year ago), and 67 percent gave Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a positive score on that question (a nine-point drop).

The U.S. armed forces scored the highest on that question: 92 percent said soldiers had done a "good" or "excellent" job dealing with Sept. 11 and its aftermath.

Sixty-nine percent said the U.S. war on terrorism was going "very" or "fairly" well-unchanged from a year ago but less than the 83 percent who said it was going well in the weeks preceding the official end of combat in Iraq. Confidence wasn't quite as strong for the United States's ability to prevent further acts of terrorism against Americans: 55 percent said they weren't confident, while 45 percent said they were.

Meanwhile, a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (D) poll conducted for Democracy Corps (D) asked respondents whether they felt safer today than they did before President Bush took office. In a half-sample, 43 percent said they felt safer, and 41 percent said they felt less safe.

The other half of respondents were asked whether they felt safer now than they did right after the Sept. 11 attacks. Sixty-one percent felt safer, while 26 percent did not.