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(CNSNews.com) -- With new polls showing that more than half of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly and that Iraq will never become a stable democracy, you might think that anti-war groups in the U.S. would be trumpeting their influence.

Instead, the groups appear to be caught in their own brand of civil war, criticizing each other for management styles, sympathizing with Communist dictators and pandering to the media. They have bickered over alleged racism and even over issues like who would get more microphone time and pay for the portable toilets at anti-war rallies.

The feuding appears to have precluded any kind of nationally coordinated anti-war rallies from happening on March 19, the third-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Small, local protests are planned by various anti-war groups around the country.

"The souring of the political atmosphere is largely due to ANSWER, which, in our experience, consistently substitutes labels ('racist,' 'anti-unity') and mischaracterization of others' views for substantive political debate or problem solving," reads the open letter issued last Dec. 12, by the group United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It marked the opening salvo in a war of words that has been fought on the groups' individual websites and all over the blogosphere.

In announcing that it would no longer coordinate activities with International ANSWER, UFPJ criticized ANSWER's links to the Workers World Party (WWP), a group that allegedly had supported atrocities committed by Communist regimes around the world.

ANSWER also "has a history of seeking to dominate coalitions and many embarrassing ultra-hard line positions," according to UFPJ supporter Bill Weinberg, whose column was published in the November/December issue of the magazine Nonviolent Activist.

International ANSWER's leader -- former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark -- was also singled out for criticism after providing legal help to some of the world's most notorious ousted leaders.

"Ramsey Clark, the visible leader of the International Action Center, is a founder of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, and has also provided legal representation for some accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He has more recently volunteered for Saddam Hussein's legal team," Weinberg noted in his column late last fall.

UFPJ's complaints about ANSWER also delved into areas not related to ideology. UFPJ claimed that ANSWER monopolized the microphones during the groups' joint Sept. 24, 2005, anti-war rally in Washington D.C.

"ANSWER did not honor the agreed-upon time limits for its sections of the pre-march Rally, going more than an hour over in one section," the open letter from UFPJ's steering committee alleged last Dec. 12. The letter added that "ANSWER did not turn out many volunteers to provide for fundraising, security and media operations for the March and Rally."

In a Jan. 10, 2006 article entitled "The War within the Antiwar Movement," published on CounterPunch.org, anti-war activist Lenni Brenner defended International ANSWER against the attacks.

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