IRAQ - Iraq Policy Change Unlikely.

In poll after poll, prospective voters name Iraq as the No 1 issue in the Nov. 7 mid-term elections. So if voters tip one or both Houses of Congress out of Republican control, what impact would that have on the US war effort in Iraq and, more generally, on American foreign policy? Democrats could conceivably view such an election outcome as a mandate for asserting a markedly different course in Iraq than the one President Bush has set. But one should not expect too much. For one thing, Democrats are not of one mind on what to do about Iraq. And while committees chaired by Democrats might hold more meetings and call more testifiers critical of some White House policies, Bush would still retain the power of the presidential bully pulpit. In addition, Bush's foreign policy in the second term has already evolved in a direction away from unilateralism and towards greater co-operation that suits both Bush's political opponents and moderates in his own party.

For others, the differences between Bush and the Democrats on the big foreign-policy issues are really a matter of details and not starkly black and white. The Christian Science Monitor on Nov. 1 quoted Julian Zelizer, a specialist in foreign policy and contemporary American politics at Boston University, as saying: "My hunch is that there wouldn't be a large change in American foreign policy with a divided government because there really hasn't been a deep division over the overall direction of that policy".

Indeed, while some Democratic members of Congress have fielded ideas that have pushed the Iraq debate forward Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania calling for a withdrawal from Iraq or Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware proposing a confederation of sectarian-based provinces to stem the violence, the Democrats are not united behind one Iraq policy. That can be seen in the disparate campaigning by Democrats on Iraq, with the one common thread a stiff criticism of Bush's "stick with it until victory" policy. Despite some niche attention to Darfur or Iran or China trade policy, foreign policy in the mid-term elections largely boils down to Iraq. Recognising that, the White House is signalling to voters that it hears and shares their anxiety, while suggesting that adjustments in policy are coming no matter the outcome of the elections.

"It's what I call the law of anticipated reaction", says Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, now at the Centre for American Progress in Washington. He said: "The White House can read the writing on the wall and is already adjusting: They've given up 'stay the course' and are now talking about tactical adjustments. That way they get ahead of looking like they are being pushed by the Democrats". That said, a House or Senate controlled by Democrats would not be welcomed by the White House. After all, relatively recent history shows that a hostile Congress can at least slow a president's preferred foreign-policy course.

As a new president in 1974, Gerald Ford received briefings from Pentagon officials saying the US could stave off a full victory by North Vietnam in the south with a bombing campaign. But the Republican president decided against it. Faced with stiff opposition to more war from a Congress that had increased its Democratic majority in mid-term elections, Ford would later conclude in his memoirs that approving the air strikes would have got him impeached.

Congressional opposition to Bush's Iraq war policy may not have reached that level. But that and other differences over foreign policy could raise the speed bumps for the White House. For example, Democrats who were earlier forced to hold a kind of rump committee meeting for retired military officers disgruntled over Iraq could now make such hearings official. "It will cause problems for Bush, that we know", says Thomas Henriksen, a foreign-policy expert at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California. "We could anticipate new troubles for Rumsfeld, more debate over what we do with radical Islam".

In terms of foreign policy, perhaps even more important than who controls Congress is the fact that Bush will be entering his last two years in the White House. Henriksen says Bush faces a "double whammy" of receding power and the unpopularity of his defining foreign-policy action. Some experts point out that Bush, hardly known as a leader who changes his mind easily, has paid little heed to respected foreign-policy thinkers in his own party with differing views: for example, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a longtime critic of Bush Iraq policy. Some observers believe that kind of brushoff will end when the congressionally mandated ISG offers its recommendations some time after the elections. But there are even doubts in some quarters over how much stock the White House will put in those recommendations.

This suggests to some analysts that the Democrats will not expect to make dramatic changes in foreign policy, even if they manage to win both houses of Congress. Zelizer of Boston University says: "The focus then was the domestic agenda, but it will still serve as a cautionary tale to the Democrats about being too bold".

Hell If Saddam Gets Death: Saddam's defence team has sent a letter to the US President Bush warning him that Iraq will turn into "hell" if the former dictator was sentenced to death. Arab News on Oct. 31 quoted Ziyad Najdawi, one of the defence lawyers, as saying: "We have sent a letter to Bush urging him to realize that any verdict passed on the country's legitimate president will turn Iraq into hell and play havoc with neighboring countries, where peoples will not stay idle as they see Islamic Iraq set ablaze".

The Iraqi criminal court, which two months ago concluded the trial of Saddam and six of his co-defendants in the case of Dujail, set Nov. 5 as a date for issuing its ruling. But Najdawi said he had learned that the court had deferred issuing the verdict until further notice, suggesting the message to Bush was the reason behind the deferment.

Saddam and his former aides are accused of killing 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the wake of an abortive attempt on Saddam's life in the village of Dujail in 1982. Najdawi said: "The US administration has apparently realized that it will be pouring fuel on fire if it tries to salvage its reputation by pushing the court, appointed by Washington, to issue such verdict. We have not received any reply to the letter, but we do know through analysis of what is going on that the Americans are well aware of the seriousness of the situation in Iraq and if they exercise the game in a stupid way the consequences will be catastrophic for them. The Americans do know that the key player in the Iraqi arena is currently the Iraqi resistance, which inflicts heavy losses on them".

Najdawi said the defence lawyers on Oct. 30 pulled out of the courtroom to protest the "illegal" behaviour of the tribunal's presiding judge Muhammad al-Oreibi in rejecting the legal demands of the defence team. The demands, he said, included allowing Arab and non-Arab defence lawyers to assume their legal rights in defending their clients before the court, adding: "The court has violated the universally observed rule of allowing defendants to choose their own lawyers and exclude those appointed by the tribunal. After consulting with the president and his colleagues, the defence lawyers decided to suspend their attendance until their demands are met".

Saddam trial continued with a survivor of Saddam's alleged genocide on Oct. 30 saying: Iraqi troops dragged prisoners to a pit cut out of the desert sands and shot them two-by-two under the lights of a waiting bulldozer. The anonymous witness said he had been among 35 Kurdish detainees taken into the desert near the western Iraqi city of Ramadi in April 1988, during Saddam's "Anfal campaign".

The ousted dictator and his co-defendants sat impassively in the dock in the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad as the witness added his testimony to the growing body of evidence of a mass slaughter of civilian prisoners.