The mounting death toll among US troops in Iraq and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for war have turned military victory into political headache ahead of the November 2 vote.

"Iraq, at best, is mixed for the president: He may have captured Saddam Hussein, but US casualties are higher, Iraqi casualties have risen," according to presidential historian Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington.

So while Bush's first major advertisement blitz loudly evokes details from the 2001 terrorist attacks that left 3,000 people dead -- including firefighters carrying a flag-covered stretcher out of smoldering New York rubble, sirens blaring in the background -- it is mute on the campaign in Iraq.

In fact, the commercials mention the 2001 recession, corporate scandals, the popping of the technology-stock bubble, job losses, the need to improve schools and health care, but not one word about the US-led occupation.

Although Bush has refused to budge on the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty, Iraq's political future is clouded in doubt, which makes bold assertions about success there dangerous.

"He's more at the mercy of events there than he's controlling events. Will there really be the transfer of power on June 30, July 1? Will the bombings and the attacks against US soldiers continue?" said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Bush has been badly burned in the past after expressing upbeat certainty about Iraq, most notably when he declared "major combat" over on May 1 in a speech aboard an aircraft carrier.

Insurgents have killed more than 260 US soldiers since that carefully choreographed photo-opportunity, which featured a "Mission Accomplished" banner that may yet turn up in advertisements run by the president's political foes.

Still, Bush can take comfort in the fact that 61 percent of swing voters -- the undecideds who decide US elections -- think the war in Iraq was "the right decision", according to a poll by the non-partisan Pew Research Center.

And 62 percent of them say the invasion helped the overall war on terrorism, according to Pew.

Another question is whether inquiries into the yawning gap between Bush's pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons and the failure to find them will vindicate charges from critics who say the president misled the public on the threat, said Davis.

The US leader inoculated himself against that danger last month, when he grudgingly appointed a panel to investigate Iraq intelligence but set its final report for March 2005, well after the November election.

And in speech after speech, he tackles charges that he overstated the danger, arguing that there was an international consensus even among nations that opposed the war that Saddam was "a threat".

He also attacks his Democratic rival, Senator John Kerry, who voted for a congressional resolution authorizing Bush to make war but now says the president should have done more to secure global backing.

"My opponent admits that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He just didn't support my decision to remove Saddam from power. Perhaps he was hoping Saddam would lose the next Iraqi election," the president jokes.

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