IRAQ - Bush's Chances Improving.

Just a few months ago, noted the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) on Sept. 9, "Iraq looked like President Bush's albatross". Facing a violent insurgency, bodies of contractors being dragged through the streets of Falluja, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, polls showed public opinion turning sharply against the war, dragging down his approval ratings. "Today, however, while the violence in Iraq continues, the war has become less of a political negative - and by some measurements a positive - for Mr. Bush".

The number of voters saying it was a mistake to send troops into Iraq has dropped, said the CSM, and Americans now say they trust Bush on the issue more than his rival, Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

The challenge for Kerry is to somehow shift the debate onto the question of whether Bush's policies in Iraq have been a success, rather than whether the decision to go to war was justified. "It is imperative that Senator Kerry crystallize his message on Iraq better", says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic group. At the same time, many Democrats admit Bush has succeeded in framing the Iraq war as a crucial front in the larger war against terror, and as a necessary response to 9/11. At the Republican convention, Bush argued that the lesson of 9/11 was that the US must be vigilant and quick to address threats before they grow. Bush also pinned success in Iraq - and the effort to spread liberty in the region - as critical to the long-term goal of stemming terrorism. Marshall says: "The Republicans did at least a temporarily successful job of enunciating a larger and lofty goal of defending democracy against a new extremism, and promoting democracy in the Middle East as the antidote [to terrorism]". Still, he adds, there is a "widening gap" between the president's rhetoric and the current conditions in Iraq, which he believes Kerry can exploit: "Kerry's job is to get us back to reality".

Kerry blamed what he called Bush's "go-it-alone policy in Iraq" for costing American taxpayers $200 bn that might otherwise have been absorbed by allies, just as a much larger international coalition absorbed the bulk of war costs in 1991. That $200 bn, Kerry said, could have paid for things like after-school programmes for children, better health care for veterans, and more police officers for American cities. Bush, in his Oval Office comments, again equated the war in Iraq with the war against anti-US terrorists and said the country had no choice but to do whatever it took to defeat them, saying: "We're still on the offense here in this country. We're chasing down these killers overseas so we don't have to face them here at home. We're making good progress. Ultimately we will prevail".