Michael McPhearson vociferously opposed the Iraq war and plans to march next month against the military's occupation.

To call the 39-year-old Newark man a pacifist would be missing the mark.

The former Army field artillery officer rolled into Iraq with the 24th Infantry Division during the first Gulf War and was angry it ended in 100 hours with Saddam Hussein still in power. Now, he says, the U.S. action in Iraq is the wrong fight in the wrong place.

The reasons for the war, cuts in veterans services and issues regarding President Bush's military record could erode the support of a voting bloc that Republicans have counted on.

"Veterans are a much more fertile field for Democrats in 2004 than they were in 2000," said Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who studies military attitudes and voting patterns.

David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organizations at the University of Maryland, said that "for the first time in our history, some of the most vocal opponents of a war are dependents of deployed service members and veterans themselves."

Segal, a sociologist, sees veterans groups as especially sensitive to the ways ongoing battles with insurgents have strained the troops in Iraq.

"The volunteer force is closer to be being broken than at any time in its 30-year history, and I think veterans -- not to mention active-duty military -- realize that," he said.

Activists say their protests differ from previous war demonstrations because they include a spectrum of former military men who fought in World War II through the Gulf War, Somalia and the Balkans.

In contrast, veterans' protests against the Vietnam War were largely led by men who fought there and came home. Few World War II and Korean War veterans were involved in Vietnam protests, especially in the early years of the conflict.

"A lot of us were oblivious to Vietnam. We'd served our time and were busy raising families," said Wilson "Woody" Powell, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran from St. Louis, who helped found Veterans for Peace in 1986. "Now, I keep encountering guys who see what's going on in Iraq, the casualties, no WMD, entire towns of reservists called up and they sense something is wrong, awfully wrong."

NEW PROTESTS

Powell's organization, which has just over 3,000 members, is among a half-dozen veterans organizations planning to participate in protests next month in Dover, Del.; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Some of the groups trace their roots to Vietnam. Others, such as Veterans against the Iraq War, were organized during the buildup to the war.

All of the groups emphasize their support for the troops serving in Iraq and say their credibility is bolstered by the fact they served.

And as the count of Americans killed in Iraq rises, some Vietnam veterans in the movement say they experience a familiar unease with every death.

Jaime Vazquez, a Marine Corps veteran who received a Purple Heart for a grenade wound received near Khe Sahn in 1968, fears the United States is falling into a bottomless morass.

"The people who put us in Iraq don't want parallels to Vietnam, but they can't avoid it," said Vazquez, who is director of veterans affairs for Jersey City. "They're both guerrilla warfare, hard to control. Even if 2 percent of the population is still loyal to Saddam Hussein, we've bitten off more than we can chew."

Like many of the veterans speaking out against the Iraq war, Vazquez, 54, believes the United States invaded before exhausting diplomatic approaches and with inadequate help from its allies.

Most of the veterans opposed to the war in Iraq deemed U.S. military strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan to be the proper response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"I supported the way the military was used in Afghanistan," said Seth Pollack, a former Army intelligence sergeant who served in the Persian Gulf War and in Bosnia. But the 33-year-old business consultant from Phoenix founded Veterans for Common Sense after President Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea part an "axis of evil."

"It was clear there was an 'us and them' attitude emerging," Pollack said. "Anyone who has seen war firsthand knows it's a horrible thing, something to be used as a last resort. But when you get the attitude you're the hammer -- every problem looks like a nail."

CALL FOR RESTRAINT

Veterans' calls for restraint do not surprise Feaver, the Duke professor. He said surveys he conducted in the mid-1990s for a recently published book on civil-military relations led him to believe that people who served in the military generally favor using force rarely, but decisively. People who have not served are more likely to favor using force regularly, but less decisively.

Exactly how many veterans oppose the Iraq war remains an open question because no reliable current polls of veterans exist, Feaver said. A study conducted by Feaver four years ago estimated that 37 percent of veterans were Republicans, 31 percent were Democrats and the remainder were unaffiliated.

But there are other issues important to veterans in the election beyond the conduct of the war.

The president recently drew the ire of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, two of the nation's largest -- and most conservative -- veterans organizations, by unveiling a budget they say falls $2.6 billion short of what is needed to fully fund veterans' health care.

Earlier this month, VFW Commander in Chief Edward S. Banas Sr. said Bush ignored veterans in his State of the Union address. Banas added that the president's budget proposal made it "further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with this administration."

David Cline, who served as a rifleman in the Army's 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery and three Purple Hearts after being shot three separate times in combat, said proposed closure of as many as 10 Veterans Administration hospitals around the country has upset many former servicemen.

"You don't go send guys off to fight a war at the same time you're closing the hospitals you'll need to treat them when they come home," said Cline, 57, of Jersey City.

Segal, the University of Maryland sociologist, sees the Bush administration's budget proposal as a political miscalculation on the part of a president who enjoyed widespread support from veterans in 2000.

He said the candidacies of former Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a decorated Vietnam veteran, changed the tenor of the campaign.

"With the deficit building up, they thought, 'We can cut (veterans benefits),'" Segal said. "I think they calculated wrong. Had they been running against a (Howard) Dean, they would have calculated correctly."

ON THE RECORDS

Veterans, however, are mixed on how they view the military records of Bush and Kerry.

In Bush's case, some veterans, such as Cline, are troubled because the president's service in the National Guard all but precluded his service in Vietnam. Cline and others also are irked by questions about whether the president fully completed his military obligations with the Texas Air National Guard.

"This touches a nerve for a lot of us guys who didn't have family connections to avoid the draft," said Cline, who was drafted in 1967. "We talk about the hypocrisy of politicians who didn't see combat but are hot to go to war."

McPhearson, the Newark veteran, says American soldiers are in an impossible situation in Iraq. "They're being asked to do something they weren't trained for. They're asked to be policemen. They aren't. They're trained to use overwhelming force. To totally control the country, they would have to be as ruthless as Saddam. Nobody wants that."

That is not to say Kerry's war record endears him to all veterans.

While some call Kerry a brother in arms, others will never forgive him for accusing American troops of war crimes during testimony before Congress in 1971.

McPhearson says dissent by veterans should not be confused with a lack of patriotism.

"If you are a true patriot, you speak out against something you think is wrong," he said.

Wayne Woolley covers the military. He may be reached at wwoolley@starledger.com or (973) 392-1559.