Dems Counter Bush Attack With Iraq Ads

President Bush gestures as he speaks to supporters at campaign rally at Georgia Southern University Hanner Athletic Complex, Monday, Oct. 30, 2006 in Statesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Pablo Martinez Monsivais - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Campaigning for Republicans, President Bush said Monday that "terrorists win and America loses" if opponents of his Iraq policy triumph in next week's elections. Undeterred, House Democrats countered with television ads critical of the war in several competitive races.

"There's a big national debate in this country about the direction of this war set by President Bush, Defense Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney, and Democrats think we need to change that policy," said Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who heads the Democratic campaign committee.

As the death toll for U.S. troops in Iraq passed 100 for the month, officials said ads criticizing Republican candidates for following the president's lead on the war would air in the campaign's final week in Connecticut, New Mexico, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Iowa and other areas they declined to name.

Public opinion polls show widespread public dissatisfaction with the war, helping give Democrats their best chance in more than a decade at winning control of at least one house of Congress.

They must gain 15 seats in the House or six in the Senate to usher in a new era of divided government _ and complicate Bush's final two years in office.

Thirty-six gubernatorial races are also on the ballot Nov. 7, and Democrats appear poised to win several statehouses long in Republican hands, New York, Ohio and Massachusetts among them.

After a decade of struggle, Democrats projected confidence with eight days of campaigning remaining, and increasingly, the battle for control of Congress was being waged on Republican turf. So much so that the House Democratic campaign committee arranged to begin television advertising against GOP Reps. Anne Northup in Kentucky and Jon Porter in Nevada, as well as for an open seat in western Nebraska that in recent years has been among the most safely Republican in the country.

About three dozen Republican-held House seats were on the list of highly contested races, and Democratic challengers led incumbent Republican senators in three or four states.

By contrast, only one Democratic Senate seat appeared competitive _ Republican State Sen. Tom Kean Jr.'s challenge of Sen. Robert Menendez' in New Jersey. And in a sure sign of crimped expectations, most of the millions of dollars House Republicans are spending on television advertising in the campaign's final week is designed to protect seats already in their hands.

Party allegiances were hard to track in a few cases.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican mentioned as a potential independent presidential contender, campaigned in Connecticut for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat running as an independent, and hoping a surge of GOP support will carry him to victory.

Labels aside, Bloomberg's rhetoric meshed perfectly with Lieberman's appeal. "I think people of all parties are just tired of the political bickering," the mayor said at a news conference in Stamford, Conn.