With eye on elections, Senate debates Iraq war

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a debate likely to shape
November’s elections, the Senate fought bitterly on Wednesday
over measures pushed by Democrats to wind down U.S. involvement
in Iraq that Republicans derided as “cut-and-run” strategies.

Republicans sought to turn the tables on Democrats over the
war, depicting them as weak on terrorism and casting Iraq as
the front in a terror war that would otherwise move to the
United States.

Democrats, banking on the war’s unpopularity in their bid
to regain control of Congress in the midterm elections, said
their amendments showed their united opposition to President
George W. Bush’s policies.

But they offered two plans — one to start withdrawing U.S.
troops this year but without a deadline to finish withdrawal,
and another to pull out combat forces by July 2007.

Most Democrats, shying away from setting a pullout deadline
for fear that could lead to a full-scale Iraqi civil war,
backed the nonbinding resolution crafted by Sens. Carl Levin of
Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island calling for the start of
the withdrawal but with no timetable.

But about a dozen were expected to support the amendment to
put a deadline into law that is being pushed by Sens. John
Kerry of Massachusetts and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who
both have eyes on presidential runs in 2008.

Some senators were expected to support both amendments in
votes expected on Thursday, seeing the Levin-Reed amendment as
a fallback position.

Republicans called them “cut-and-run” and “cut-and-jog”
amendments that showed fissures in the Democratic Party.

“It’s been interesting to watch the Democrats debate among
themselves,” said Senate Republican Whip Mitch McConnell of
Kentucky. He expressed confidence the Republican-controlled
chamber would defeat both measures.

Democrats lashed out that Republicans were trying to
exploit for their political gain a war in which 2,500 U.S.
soldiers have died.

‘PARTISAN SQUABBLE’

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat and
another likely presidential contender, questioned whether the
issue was “a strategy to win in Iraq or a strategy for
Republicans to win elections here at home.” She accused them of
turning the debate “into a partisan squabble designed to
mislead voters.”

Reed said his amendment was intended to “begin to
transition the burden from American military shoulders” to
Iraqis. “This isn’t cut and run … it is an attempt to
articulate a policy based on the reality of Iraq.”

Moderates from both parties facing tough re-election bids
this fall were warily assessing their positions.

“The problem is I have a primary election separate from a
general election. Every vote is going to be under attack,” said
Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican in heavily
Democratic Rhode Island who has angered his party by bucking
Bush on a number of issues.

Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat in Republican-dominated
Nebraska, said, “I’m not for a date for withdrawal … but I
also don’t think we ought to be there indefinitely and I’m a
little concerned about what the president said when he said the
next president will resolve this.”

Capitalizing on Bush’s statement that some decisions on
Iraq would be left to the next president, Sen. Ron Wyden, an
Oregon Democrat, had an amendment expressing the sense of the
Senate that U.S. troops should not still be in Iraq at or near
current levels of about 130,000 in 2009, his aide said.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, a
Virginia Republican, decried the partisanship over the war. He
also blasted the Democratic amendments.

“It is a timetable no matter how many times people protest
it is not a timetable,” Warner said of the Reed-Levin
amendment. He said it would “encourage terrorism, embolden al
Qaeda” and threaten U.S. security.