Peter Huck: Bullets find echo at the ballot box

To Americans who wanted to believe that the My Lai massacre - where between 347 and 504 Vietnamese peasants were slaughtered by US soldiers in 1968 - was the only atrocity committed by its troops in Vietnam, the 9000 pages culled from once secret US Army files were a shock.

They revealed some 320 alleged atrocities. As a blast from the past, it was a grim reminder of the present.

Last week an American GI told US military investigators that he and three colleagues had raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and also murdered three other family members, in a premeditated assault. The March 12 episode is one of several incidents - including the alleged murder of 24 civilians by US Marines at Haditha in November - that have shamed the military, inflamed Iraqis and heightened American unease about the nation's involvement in Iraq.

Domestic concern that the US has become bogged down in an unwinnable conflict, a la Vietnam, escalated when General John Abizaid, the top US General in the Middle East, warned the US Senate Armed Services Committee that sectarian violence could push Iraq into civil war. This sobering opinion was shared by General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by the outgoing British Ambassador, William Patey, who said that civil war was "more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy".

Their comments cranked up the temperature on the war, which most Americans fear has become a costly debacle.

Polls suggest Iraq has become even more divisive than Vietnam, with 60 per cent of respondents opposed to the war, according to a recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.

And, last week, in a stunning reversal of political fortune, a seasoned Democratic senator, who has stood firm with President George W. Bush on Iraq, went down in spectacular defeat, crushed by an upstart anti-war novice.

All of which is food for serious thought for Democrats, as they prepare for November's congressional elections.

Republicans, who have controlled Congress since 1994, are running scared, reeling from a galaxy of woes, including opposition to the war, anger at soaring energy prices, and Beltway scandals. Democrats must take 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six in the Senate to regain Congress.

It is a cliffhanger scenario in which power could flow from Republicans, further isolating the White House, a calculation dear to Democrats who contemplate a presidential run in 2008.

But many congressional Democrats nurse an Achilles heel, as voters question their support for US involvement in Iraq. When the Bush Administration launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (changed from "Operation Iraqi Liberation" because of the OIL acronym) against Saddam Hussein in 2003, most Democrats supported Bush.

Since then support for the war among grass-roots Democrats has steadily evaporated, as mounting US casualties, revelations that neo-conservatives within the Bush Administration cherry-picked pre-war intelligence, and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal fuel an online protest movement harnessed by upstart advocacy groups such as MoveOn.com MoveOn.com.

It is a sea change that has re-energised Democratic voters, shifting power from Washington to the precincts. It also suggests that with an official 2591 US soldiers dead, 19,270 wounded, and no end in sight, Iraq has become a lightning rod in this year's political season, forcing congressional Democrats to declare whether they are "with or against" a hawkish President who has hijacked the emotive issue of national security.

Certainly, Democrats will have to do better than presidential candidate John Kerry, whose tortuous policy of trying to distance himself from Bush, while refusing to declare himself against the war, in 2004 proved the political equivalent of squaring the circle, a doomed strategy.

Now, as Democrats scramble to come up with a credible policy that will distance themselves from beleaguered Republicans - who show signs of planning to fight in November by stressing that Democrats are weak on national security - many find themselves at odds with the party base.

The potentially disastrous schism was highlighted by last week's "high noon in Connecticut". Veteran Senator Joe Lieberman, 64, Al Gore's running mate in 2000, found himself fighting for his political life in his party's Senate primary race. His opponent was Ned Lamont, 52, a cable TV millionaire who had never held elective office. Nonetheless, Lamont's incendiary anti-war campaign made Iraq the key issue.

The election was a "referendum" on Lieberman's support for the war, noted the New York Times. As US troops seek to regain control of Baghdad this week, in what their commanding general calls a "defining moment in the campaign", it may also be a wake-up call, signalling that Democrats need to craft a clear alternative to Bush's Iraq strategy.

At first Lamont's campaign was dismissed by seasoned pros, who concluded his out-of-left-field challenge would never ignite. Back in January polls showed he had 4 per cent name recognition. Wags said this "was within the margin of error". Seven months later he had a 13 per cent lead. "Do you want to stay the course [in Iraq] or change the course," was his mantra. Lieberman's position on Iraq made him seem increasingly vulnerable. He consistently backed the US war in Iraq, even as it spiralled out of control.

As the war worsened and pundits talked of "exit strategies", Lieberman stood with Bush, one of only six Democratic senators to oppose a June resolution urging the withdrawal of US troops.

Anti-war bloggers hammered home "the Kiss", Lieberman's notorious embrace by Bush at the 2005 State of the Union address as evidence that the Senator had become the President's man, an apologist for the most disastrous US foreign adventure since Vietnam.

"If it sounds like George W. Bush, and acts like George W. Bush, it's certainly not a Connecticut Democrat," went one anti-Lieberman TV advertisement.

Backed by trade unions, party apparatchiks, and Bill Clinton in a fight for the party's soul, Lieberman stood firm.

"Well, I don't think I'm going to change my position," he said defiantly.

It was a no-compromise stance that, like Lieberman's declaration that he would run as an independent if he lost, effectively a loose cannon against his party, made him seem out of step.

"There is going to be a great uprising in Connecticut today," Lieberman predicted on Tuesday. He was right. By day's end Lamont had squeaked home.

As the dust cleared it became apparent that Lamont's win was an anti-war vote.

It's a telling lesson too for Senator Hillary Clinton, who supported the war.