Home for their August recess, members of Congress are meeting voters anxious and polarized over the war in Iraq.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette
	Carole Wiedmann of Sewickley is taken into custody by Pittsburgh police, one of three people arrested yesterday morning during an anti-war protest outside an Army recruiting station in Oakland. RELATED COVERAGE 3 arrested in anti-war protest here A graphic look at recent opinion polls on the Iraq war

As polls reflect as drop in overall approval of President Bush's handling of the war, lawmakers' constituents are expressing views that range from a determination to nurture democracy in Iraq to outraged demands for the speedy withdrawal of American troops.

"I'm not hearing from people that we need to get out; what I am hearing is that we should give our soldiers everything they need to protect them while they're doing the job there,'' said Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods, who supports Bush administration policies.

"Get out; get out of Iraq; that's the overwhelming reaction,'' said Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Johnstown, who supported invading Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein but has been sharply critical of the administration's post-invasion performance. "People understand the danger there," said Murtha, a Vietnam veteran. "They see the carnage and they feel they were misled.''

These disparate views are coming into sharper focus as key thresholds are crossed in the continuing conflict in Iraq.

Over the last month, American troops have suffered some of the worst casualty tolls of the war. The struggle of Iraqi leaders to craft a constitution has pointed both to the possibility for democracy and to the ethnic and sectarian divisions that frustrate that goal while helping to fuel the insurrection. The melodrama of Cindy Sheehan's vigil in Crawford, Texas, has sparked both solidarity and opposition across the country. And a surprisingly strong showing by a Democratic congressional candidate in an Ohio special election has stirred Democratic hopes for significant gains in next year's mid-term elections.

"I hate this war,'' said Elaine Givens, of McKeesport, as she wandered through the food booth at McKeesport's annual International Festival. "All these kids who have never had a chance to live life are dying because of Bush and his agenda and I see no progress toward any solution.''

A few yards away in Renziehausen Park, Dondrea Blackwell voiced confidence in Bush.

"Freedom isn't free,'' said Blackwell. "To me, it's like our Civil War; we didn't know how long that was going to last but it's still important to see it through.''

As he strolled through the festival, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, who voted against the war resolution, said, "I sense a rising level of frustration. A lot of people feel that this is something that we're never going to get right.''

Still, as he worked the festival crowd one night last week, no one spontaneously mentioned the war. And Hart recalled that in a visit to the Lawrence County fair voters were more likely to voice concerns about gas prices and health care costs than Iraq.

Iraq was front and center in Frick Park Wednesday night, though, as one of the region's larger anti-war demonstrations of recent years spilled over the rim of the Beechwood Boulevard playground.

"My wife and I are against the war because we see all of these young people being slaughtered,'' said Jack Rubin of Squirrel Hill. "I wasn't against the war at first but seeing all these young people being killed changed my mind.''

While disagreeing on the war, local lawmakers agreed that they had seen a shift in attitudes over the past year.

"Definitely, I hear more concern about the safety of our troops, because there's been more loss of life,'' said Hart. "When they talk to me, they tell me to make sure they have better armor, better equipment, they want to be sure we have the intelligence to do the job.''

"There a 180-degree difference,'' said Murtha. "At first there was optimism ... but now people feel they were misled. When you lose public support, you're going have to start bringing the troops home.''

Recent national polls have portrayed an erosion in overall support for the administration but show a public ambivalent on what to do next in Iraq.

A CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll released earlier this month showed that 54 percent of those surveyed felt that it had been a mistake to send troops to Iraq. That was the highest negative response to that question since July of 2004. Fifty-six percent of the respondents said that they felt the United States should withdraw all or some of its troops from Iraq, while 41 percent said troop levels should either be maintained or boosted.

A Newsweek poll, also conducted in the first week of August, found that only 34 percent of the public approved of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, while 61 percent said they disapproved. That reflected a sharp and continuing slide from the 69 percent of Americans who said they supported Bush on Iraq in May, 2003, soon after the Saddam regime had been toppled.

Bush approval rating on Iraq was only slightly better -- 41 percent, with 55 percent disapproval -- in the most recent CBS poll. Like other recent surveys, and those conducted throughout Bush's tenure, it showed a stark partisan divide.

Republicans approved of Bush's performance on Iraq by 79-17 percent, while Democrats disapproved of his performance by the similarly overwhelming margin of 83-15 percent. Voters who described themselves as independents disapproved of Bush on the war by a 61-23 percent margin in the CBS survey.

But two other questions in the CBS poll reflected lingering ambivalence about the decision to invade Iraq, if not the post-invasion situation. Fifty-nine percent said in August that the war had not been worth the loss in American lives, while only 34 percent said that it had been. A year and hundreds of casualties ago, the public was almost evenly divided on that question.

At the same time, however, the August survey found that a narrow plurality of Americans thought that the United States had done the right thing in acting against Saddam, a result that had changed little over the last year.

Those numbers, coupled with an overall erosion in Bush's approval ratings, have fueled Democratic hopes for major gains in next year's mid-term elections. That partisan expectation was piqued by the recent Ohio special election in which the GOP candidate, Jean Schmidt barely held onto a seat in a district that Bush had carried by landslide margins twice.

Republicans, including Hart, contend that the Ohio contest can be attributed to local factors, such as the sharply contested GOP primary that preceded it and the controversy that hangs over Ohio Republicans due to the scandals surrounding Gov. Bob Taft.

Asked about the implication of the war for Republican candidates next year, Hart said, "People understand we're in a war; they understand you can't cut and run.''

"As long as we pay attention to the troops and make sure that they have the things they need to make progress, I think the implications will be good."

Doyle disagrees.

"It will be huge,'' he said of the potential for GOP vulnerability. "If we are mired down in Iraq and not making any further progress in defending ourselves and forming a government, I think it's going to have an enormous impact."

In an article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, analyst Daniel Yankelovich cites polling data from earlier this summer to suggest that public concern over Iraq is about to reach a "tipping point'' that might soon force the Bush administration into changing its policies.

"But barring an unexpectedly huge spike in insurgency violence, in my judgment, the Bush administration has about a year before the public impatience will force it to change course,'' he wrote.

Yankelovich's argument underscores the importance of the current negotiations among Iraqis to write a new constitution and the urgency of making progress toward a stable, less violent society. The political timetable calls for a constitution to be drafted by tomorrow and approved by voters in October, followed by national elections in December governed by the new legal framework.

Democrats' ability to benefit at the polls from unrest over the war may be hampered by the fact that the party has not offered a coherent consensus alternative to Bush policies going forward. Some leading Democrats have called for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal -- a proposal that Bush has repeatedly rejected. Others have criticized the notion of scheduling a withdrawal while still others have argued that the United States should send more troops.

"I guess the party is kind of split,'' Doyle acknowledged. "There were 60 or 70 Democrats, including some of the leadership, who voted for the administration in the first place. But I think there has been more of a consensus [recently]. People like Jack Murtha have been pretty clear and pretty vocal and pretty concrete in criticizing the administration and talking about what they've done wrong.''

Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied public opinion and congressional elections, said that despite the recent poll reverses for Bush, the public had shown surprising resilience in supporting the administration's Iraq policies despite the mounting casualty toll.

But, he said, "That patience will not go on forever. You're clearly seeing some members of Congress getting nervous.''

He noted that if progress in Iraq is not apparent in coming months, Democratic candidates may not need a clear policy alternative to benefit from public weariness with the administration's performance.

"I say to Democrats,'' he said kiddingly, "Don't just do something, stand there.''