Not a single terrorist attack has taken place within the territory of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Cooperation between the FBI and the CIA has been hammered through to a greater extent than critics believed possible. Electronic surveillance has been massively expanded and FBI and U.S. intelligence officials say it has proven invaluable in monitoring extremists and nipping potential terror plots in the bud.

And U.S. inspectors at ports of entry can inspect biometric, tamper-proof passports or visas -- and check them against terrorist and other watch-lists -- for a growing proportion of visitors to the country.

Many serious problems in upgrading national security remain, especially in the area of chemical industry security, upgrading nuclear industry security and most of all, in the area of cargo container security at ports around the nation.

However, progress over the past five years has been considerable. Congress has just approved a first appropriation of $1.2 billion to build an ambitious high tech 700-mile-long security fence along the U.S.-Mexican border to stem the flood of illegal immigration across it.

However, none of that -- except possibly for the fence in the Southwest -- looks like being a significant political factor in the upcoming elections. The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq, on the contrary, plays center stage with voters, especially independently affiliated ones, according to almost all polls. And the currents of public opinion are flowing badly against the GOP.

The ironies in this are many and may look to some like a kind of karmic payback for the Republicans. Even though the mega-terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 happened eight months into President George W. Bush's first term of office, the president was never held to account in any significant way for them. In the midterm elections of 2002 and the national elections of 2004, national security issues were the ace card Bush and his party played to trump every democratic election strategy.

But now the Republicans have finally been trumped on national security. And the Democrats had nothing to do with it. The GOP trumped themselves -- with Iraq.

Since the 2004 elections, events in Iraq have gotten steadily worse. The deterioration, as we have monitored in our regular UPI Eye on Iraq and Iraq Benchmarks columns, has only intensified since the Iraqi general election late last year. The poll produced a new constitutionally approved and popularly elected parliament -- exactly as the Bush administration's strategy had required. But since the new Iraqi parliament assembled and its constituent parties finally agreed on a coalition government, law and order in Iraq has collapsed rather than being restored.

Over the past month, that deleterious trend has deepened. A new U.S.-driven strategy of using both U.S. forces and the new Iraqi security forces to move against sectarian militias, including Shiite ones in the capital Baghdad, has failed disastrously.

Even senior U.S. generals have publicly acknowledged the failure of the Baghdad operations so far and their comments have been widely reported in the U.S. media. So have the soaring U.S. casualties in Iraq -- threatening to make October the worst month for American casualties since President Bush declared "mission accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003.

The irony is, as we noted above, there has been positive progress -- and a lot of it -- in boosting U.S. homeland security at a breakneck pace over the past five years. And while the administration's track record is far from perfect and its policies on respecting human rights and constitutional liberties remain highly controversial, the achievements are real. But the disasters in Iraq have buried all of that.

Even the masterly skill the president and his top political advisor Karl Rove have shown in their political tactics over the past eight years have now come back to haunt them. They have encouraged the American electorate to ignore detailed numbers about federal budget or annual foreign trade deficits. So now the public remain unimpressed by all the statistics the administration and the Republican Party are throwing at them about improvements in homeland security.

The GOP has won elections repeatedly by hammering home visually dramatic stories and striking images -- like the ads in Georgia juxtaposing Democratic then-Sen. Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden. But now the latest wave of images of escalating mayhem in Iraq is swamping all the considered arguments the GOP is putting out to try and defend their embattled candidates.

Toppling Saddam Hussein and establishing a democratically elected government in Iraq were supposed to be a centerpiece of the Bush administration's policy to fight international terror and increase the security of the United States. Instead, the latest polling data suggests that the increasingly evident failures of U.S. policies on the ground in Iraq eliminated the strongest argument the Republicans had in their campaign to try and retain control of both houses of Congress -- their tough, determined and uncompromising record on boosting homeland security. But the Democrats did not do it to them. They did it to themselves.

Related Links
Iraq: The first techonology war of the 21st century
News and analysis about the Global War Against Terror at SpaceWar.com