Fellow Republican John McCain says there should be more US troops fighting in Iraq, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they want to end the war and bring US troops home as quickly as possible.

Clinton and Obama also oppose ongoing talks between Washington and Baghdad aimed at completing a deal on a "long-term strategic partnership" governing US troop rules when the UN mandate for the occupation lapses at year's end.

But the impact of the five-year-old war on the November election is not wholly clear: Recent public opinion polls say the battered US economy edges out Iraq as the top concern on US voters' minds.

Even as recent polls show the US public, by a two-to-one margin, considers the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein a mistake, Bush has grown increasingly unapologetic with just 10 months left in his term.

"The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency; it is the right decision at this point in my presidency; and it will forever be the right decision," he said in a speech last week.

That's even without the weapons of mass destruction that Bush cited as the core of the public case for war, and with a recent Pentagon-backed study that found no ties between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

The number of US casualties creeps ever higher to 4,000 -- and White House officials say they know they must not dismiss that milestone the way they did 2,500 dead, as just "a number."

The conflict helped cost Republicans control of Congress in November 2006 and piled pressure on Bush to announce troop withdrawals. Instead, he sent another 30,000 soldiers in a troop "surge" to smother sectarian violence.

The escalation has appeared to pay some security dividends, but has thus far failed to drive Iraq's politicians to make the hoped-for progress on national reconciliation, and missed its only military deadline: The handover of security of all of Iraq's provinces to Iraqis by November 2007.

Bush next week makes the second of three speeches to try to steel support for war before a key progress report from the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker.

McCain has warned against a "precipitous withdrawal" and says he would be "fine" with a 100-year US presence -- "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

Presidential rivals Obama and Clinton are also warring over Iraq among themselves, with Obama eager to note that the former First Lady voted in favor in 2002 of the legislation Bush cites as an authority to go to war.

"On the most important foreign policy decision that we faced in a generation, whether or not to go into Iraq, I was very clear as to why we should not," he said at a debate with Clinton in Ohio late last month.

"And the fact is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one (of taking office), but in fact she was ready to give in to George Bush on day one on this critical issue."

But Clinton, bidding to undermine Obama's commander-in-chief credentials, argues that his promise to pull combat troops out of Iraq in 2009 has been undermined by talk of a more flexible approach from one of his former aides.

"I've got to tell you, there's a big difference between talk and action. But if you're going to talk, then you ought to mean what you say so people can count on it," the New York senator said on Tuesday.

Clinton herself says that if elected, she would start withdrawing US forces from Iraq within 60 days, but has not given a date to complete the process.

McCain might benefit if Iraq shifts further off the electoral radar, with polls now suggesting that the economy tops US voters' concerns.

If he is unable to persuade the public that the United States is succeeding in Iraq, "then I lose" in November, the Arizona senator said late in February, before retracting the remark.

"The task of beginning the end of the US occupation will really be up to the next president. It will be a very difficult task and consume much of the presidency," said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.

"Getting out of Iraq is not going to be much easier than staying in, there are lots of bad options out there," he said.

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