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GREELEY, Colorado - President George W. Bush vowed on Saturday to stick with the war in Iraq and Democrats said they would fight for a new course in the conflict in a final weekend of campaigning ahead of Tuesday elections in which control of the US Congress is at stake.
"I understand the consequences of retreat," Bush told thousands of Republican loyalists at a rally. "That's why we'll support our troops, that's why we'll fight in Iraq, and that's why we'll win in Iraq."
He was unfazed by a heckler at the rally for Colorado Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave's re-election bid. "Get out of Iraq," the heckler shouted from a perch on a tractor before he was hustled out.
Democrats, feeling good about their chances of seizing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and possibly the Senate as well, said it was time for a change.
"We will fight for a new direction in Iraq to change the president's failed course so that our troops can finally come home," said a House Democratic candidate, Lois Murphy of Pennsylvania, in her party's weekly radio address.
The unpopular Iraq war has been the leading factor in Tuesday elections and there are alarm bells ringing for Republican candidates.
A Newsweek poll released on Saturday said 54 per cent of likely voters would vote for Democratic candidates and 38 per cent for the Republicans. Bush's approval rating was 35 per cent in the poll, which was taken on Thursday and Friday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report said Republican would be lucky to limit their losses in the House to 20-25 seats and four or five seats in the Senate. Democrats need 15 seats to command the House and six in the Senate.
"But the chances of this thing going bigger - far bigger - still exist, and there are quite a few veteran Republican strategists ... who are bracing themselves for that distinct possibility," report author Charlie Cook said on his website.
Bush has sought to boost Republican turnout by defending the Iraq war and accusing Democrats of lacking a plan to win it. Making the war a central theme is a political gamble given deep American unease about it. He has had the sprawling US military community largely behind him in the war.
But several newspapers widely read by US military personnel called for the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over Iraq, rejecting Bush's stated plan to retain Rumsfeld for the remaining two years of his presidency.
"Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised," the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Corps Times said in an editorial to be published on Monday.
The newspapers are published by the Military Times Media Group, a subsidiary of Gannett Co. Inc. which also publishes USA Today.
Democrats quickly seized on the editorial.
"The American people deserve a new direction from a secretary of defence who won't listen to his generals on the ground and a White House that won't listen to reason," said Illinois Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
While Bush has emphasized flexibility in recent weeks in how the war can be fought and dropped his "stay-the-course" rhetoric, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News in an interview on Friday that it would be "full speed ahead" with the war regardless of who wins on Tuesday.
Asked how the election would influence Iraq policy, Cheney replied: "I think it will have some effect, perhaps, in the Congress, but the president has made clear what his objective is. It is victory in Iraq and it is full speed ahead on that basis and that is exactly what we are going to do."
On Saturday, Cheney told a campaign rally in Laramie, Wyoming, that a Democratic congressional majority would mean higher taxes.
"If the Democrats take control, American families would face an immense tax increase, and the economy would sustain a major hit," he said.
- REUTERS
