During the "major combat phase" in Iraq, the infamous Saddam Fedayeen often hid among civilian women and children and then fired at U.S. troops, knowing that our soldiers would be reluctant to fire back.

Some U.S. politicians are now adopting a version of that tactic here at home. Rather than defend their position on its merits, they are shielding themselves behind our troops and their families. Like the fedayeen, they hope to avoid taking fire that way. And like the fedayeen, they're acting like cowards.

Last week, for example, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) criticized the war in Iraq as a fraud and our postwar policy as a colossal failure. That's harsh language, and it surely invited a harsh response. In political warfare, if you deliver a shot, you expect to take a shot. And Kennedy is more vulnerable to counterattack than almost any major U.S. politician.

But U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) took it a step or two further, complaining that Kennedy's comments "strike at the heart of the military families." Warner even summoned up the image of "a young wife surrounded by small children," a woman raising her family with her husband overseas, who hears "that this whole thing has been a fraud. Is that safeguarding those put in harm's way? I say no."

I say Warner is hiding behind the skirt of that young woman. I say he ought to come on out and debate this thing fairly, in the open. But I suspect that, like the fedayeen, he knows he's outgunned.

But Warner's comments were not the worst of the week. Not by a long shot. That came from U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, who has recently returned from Iraq. In a column a week ago, the Georgia Democrat recalled flying home from Iraq accompanied by the body of Army Sgt. Trevor Blumberg. On the way, he said, he found himself "wondering whether the news media were somehow complicit in his death." Later, he was even more blunt, stating that he's afraid pessimistic reporting "is killing our troops."

Blumberg, a 22-year-old from Canton, Mich., had in reality been killed by a booby-trapped mine near Fallujah, a hotbed of Sunni fundamentalism and Iraqi nationalism. The people who set that mine did so because they see our troops as foreign infidels occupying their country -- they could not care less what the U.S. media are reporting.

Marshall's statement outraged me, and I told him so in a polite phone conversation. More importantly, it drives this country in a direction we cannot, dare not go. If after only a few months in Iraq, we have already sunk so low as to begin pointing fingers at our fellow Americans, allocating blood responsibility for the deaths of our soldiers overseas, we're headed for a level of divisiveness that today is unimaginable. It took years to reach that point over Vietnam.

And certainly, if we care to go there, both sides can play. If one chose to indulge in that kind of vile accusation, one could make a far more logical argument that Blumberg was killed by those in the administration who committed us to an unnecessary war, and by those in Congress who approved this war without first ensuring that the administration had planned adequately for its aftermath.

When I raised that concern with Marshall, his response startled me. "Well, I guess that would be OK," he said.

No, it would not be OK.

Marshall's whole concern is that unduly pessimistic media accounts may undercut American unity for doing what is necessary in Iraq. That's a legitimate concern.

But if we in this country begin to attack each other in the terms used by Marshall, we cannot hope to sustain our presence in Iraq long enough to restore a degree of security and stability there. Marshall would create what he fears the most.

We can debate whether we should have invaded Iraq, whether the Bush administration misled us, whether the Democrats are too weak to lead in time of war. Let's talk about all that.

If instead we're going to talk about who has bloody hands in this thing, well, I suppose we can do that too. But it won't be pretty.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays.

© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

###