Greyhawk asks that question:

If the 2006 U.S. elections were a “referendum on Iraq” - who won? “The Democrats” of course - that’s an easy answer. But here we’ve always asked the tough questions, and the full answer to that one isn’t so obvious.

Remember the 2004 U.S. elections? For President, of course, but also the same number of House and Senate seats as this year’s. In the run up, all the talk was of Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. Everyone knew the election was about Iraq.

Then an odd thing happened - post-Republican victory news stories revealed that most voters were concerned with “values” and “morals” - it wasn’t about Iraq at all!

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, American troops are afraid, now that the Democrats have won, they’ll be pulled out of Iraq before they have a chance to complete their mission:

Half of America and the upper echelons of the US military may be cheering Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation from the post of Defence Secretary, but there was no rejoicing yesterday among those most directly affected by his decisions: the frontline soldiers in Iraq.

Troops expressed little pleasure at the departure of the man responsible for their protracted deployment to a hostile country where 2,839 of their comrades have died.

Indeed, some members of the 101st Airborne Division and other troops approached by The Times as they prepared to fly home from Baghdad airport yesterday expressed concern that Robert Gates, Mr Rumsfeld’s successor, and the Democrat-controlled Congress, might seek to wind down their mission before it was finished.

Mr Rumsfeld “made decisions, he stuck with them and he did what he thought was right, whether people agreed with it, liked it, or not”, Staff Sergeant Frank Notaro said. He insisted that Iraq was better off now than before the war.

Staff Sergeant Michael Howard said: “It’s a blow to the military. He was a good Secretary of Defence. He kept us focused. He kept the leaders focused. It’s going to be hard to fill his shoes.”

This echoes sentiments expressed by other soldiers immediately before the election.

I cannot express how big of a folly it would be for America to withdraw from Iraq.  The President realizes it.  The Iraqi government realizes it as they ask us to stay, and the soldiers on the ground giving their lives for this mission recognize it as well.

Now if we could just get the Democrats on board too we’d be doing something.