Returning Troops Blunt Iraq as Campaign Issue in New Hampshire By Hans Nichols
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Sergeant Brian Moore had one foot in his bunker in April when a rocket exploded, spraying his back with a dozen bits of burning shrapnel. His spine swelled, paralyzing the New Hampshire National Guardsman for two days.
Two months later, back in New Hampshire from his second Iraq deployment, Moore, 47, told Republican presidential candidate John McCain that, even with his wounds, the U.S. troop surge has tamed the "wild West'' conditions of Moore's first tour in 2003 and 2004. Now, Moore told McCain in a meeting before a town-hall meeting, Baghdad streets are as safe as "downtown Nashua.''
Like Moore, New Hampshire's National Guard troops have almost all returned to their families and jobs, mitigating the Iraq War as an election issue in a swing state both parties are targeting. Two years after anti-war sentiment helped unseat incumbent Republicans in both of New Hampshire's congressional districts, voters rank economic worries and soaring fuel prices as bigger concerns.
"More and more troops are coming home, and fewer and fewer people are being injured,'' said Dean Spiliotes, former research director for the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. "That tends to take people's minds off the immediacy of the conflict.''
McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are battling for four electoral votes from New Hampshire, the only state Republican President George W. Bush won in 2000 and lost in 2004. Obama held a 46-43 percent lead over McCain, a statistical dead heat, in a University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll released last week.
Economy Trumps Iraq
Iraq, New Hampshire voters' second-biggest issue in April, dropped to fourth place, with 8 percent picking it as their top concern. "In 2006, the war certainly was the motivating issue for Democrats, and it depressed turnout and overall depressed Republicans,'' said Andy Smith, who conducted the poll. "Today, it's all about the economy.''
More than four of 10 New Hampshire voters picked "jobs and the economy'' as the most important campaign issue, followed by gasoline prices and health care.
Diminishing voter concern about Iraq isn't necessarily good news for McCain. In the presidential race, "all the data out there show that Democrats do better on domestic issues,'' Spiliotes said. "If the economy is trumping everything, that should help the Democrats.''
New Hampshire Focus
Both campaigns have lavished attention on New Hampshire. Obama, who lost the state's primary to Hillary Clinton, picked Unity, New Hampshire, for his first appearance with the New York senator after clinching the Democratic nomination.
McCain has visited New Hampshire three times since he revived his campaign by winning January's primary. In Rochester last week, McCain criticized Obama's opposition to the surge and his calls for a troop-withdrawal timetable. "It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,'' McCain said.
Moore, a high school English teacher and father of four, is among almost 12,000 Guard troops who have returned stateside this summer to share first-hand accounts of conflicts that have divided public opinion.
Moore said he was wounded in one of only three attacks he faced during his most recent 12 months in Iraq. During his first tour, Moore said his convoy took fire more times than he can remember.
The difference was the surge, "when we took control of Baghdad,'' he said.
Combat Troops
National Guard members, from military reserve units in every U.S. state, provided a bigger share of combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than they have in any other overseas conflict. Since hostilities began, almost 200,000 Guard troops have served in Iraq and more than 25,000 have been in Afghanistan.
At the peak, more than 95,000 Guard soldiers were in Iraq and 10,000 were in Afghanistan, said Major Randal Noller, a National Guard spokesman. Today, the force has fallen to 25,887 Guard troops in Iraq and 5,189 in Afghanistan -- the fewest since the march on Baghdad began in 2003.
Returning National Guard soldiers influence public perceptions of the war because most go directly back to civilian life, said Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"Communities know when someone from the Guard is out, like a sheriff, a police officer or a doctor,'' Cordesman said. "The whole community is likely to know it.''
Returning Home
New Hampshire has 20 soldiers in Afghanistan and a smaller scattering in Iraq, down from 1,100 deployed in 2004 and 2005, said Major Greg Heilshorn, a New Hampshire Guard spokesman.
Guard troops deployed overseas are
almost back to pre-war levels in other likely campaign battlegrounds, such as Wisconsin, New Mexico, Florida and Michigan. The Wisconsin National Guard's Middle East contingent now numbers 88, down from 4,000 soldiers and airmen in 2005. About 100 Florida troops are in Iraq and Afghanistan, from a peak of about 3,500.
On the campaign trail, McCain often talks about the Guard's sacrifices. "The Guard has done things that they have never done before, since World War II,'' he said in Wisconsin this month. "There's one thing worse than an overstretched and over stressed military, and that's a defeated military.''
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