Democrats Duke It Out on Iraq War: They Differ on Pullout Strategy

Jun 04, 02:12 AM

Current Headlines: By Craig Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jun. 4--MANCHESTER, N.H. -- The leading Democratic candidates sparred sharply on the issue of Iraq in their second presidential debate Sunday, clashing over past votes and their present-day commitment to ending the war.

John Edwards, the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, accused top rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama of failing to lead in the U.S. Senate on efforts to bring American troops home.

"There is a difference between leadership and legislating," said Edwards, saying Obama and Clinton were "quiet" in the recent debate over war funding and waited until the last moment to announce their decision to oppose a funding bill.

Obama fired back by citing Edwards' own vote in the Senate in 2002 to authorize force against Iraq, a vote Edwards repudiated and apologized for in 2005.

"The fact is that I opposed this war from the start. So you're about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue," Obama said to Edwards.

Clinton, who also voted to authorize force, downplayed the differences among Democrats on Iraq.

"This is George Bush's war. He is responsible for this war. He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He escalated the war. And he refuses to end the war," Clinton said. "The differences among us are minor. The differences between us and the Republicans are major."

But Clinton was challenged on that front by others on stage. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said, "This war belongs to the Democratic Party because the Democrats were put in charge by the people in the last election with the thought that they were going to end the war. Well, they haven't. They have to stop the funding."

Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel said those who voted to authorize force in 2002 should be disqualified from the presidency because "they don't have moral judgment."

A mix of formats

The two-hour debate, which was aired on CNN, took place on the campus of St. Anselm College, in a hockey rink that was dramatically transformed for the occasion. It featured a mix of formats, with candidates spending half their time at podiums and half seated in chairs in a less formal setting.

Questions came from moderator Wolf Blitzer, a panel of journalists and New Hampshire voters in the audience. Discussion ranged from immigration, health care, taxes, deficits, gays in the military, civil unions and gas prices to foreign policy dilemmas involving Iran, Pakistan and Darfur.

But the sharpest exchanges occurred over Iraq.

The candidates all oppose the surge in troops ordered by Bush, and all want the U.S. to start pulling out forces. But they have differed over exactly how and when to get out and over what Congress can and should do to force the president's hand. Kucinich said Sunday that Congress should simply refuse to fund the war.

By contrast, Joe Biden was the only Senate Democrat running for president to vote late last month for the Iraq funding bill. Biden said he did so for the safety of U.S. troops and said opponents of the war aren't being straight with people when they attack Democrats in Congress for failing to force troop withdrawals.

"I knew the right political vote, but I tell you what: Some things are worth losing elections over," Biden, of Delaware, said of his vote. "We have people telling everybody, 'Just stop the war, Congress.' We have (only) 50 votes."

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd beat both Clinton and Obama to the punch in recent weeks in getting behind efforts to de-fund the war. "We ought to try to bring it to a close," he said Sunday.

Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has gone further than the others in saying all U.S. troops should be out by the end of this year. "I would keep troops in Kuwait, where they are wanted. I would move them to Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida," he said. "But I believe that our troops (in Iraq) have become a target."

Sorry for 'yes' vote?

The candidates' other differences on Iraq involve history.

Clinton, Biden, Dodd and Edwards all voted to authorize force in 2002. Kucinich didn't, and he and Obama were early critics of the war. Clinton hasn't gone as far as Edwards and Dodd in repudiating that "yes" vote.

When the issue came up Sunday, she repeated past statements that "it was a mistake to trust George Bush" and if she knew then what she knows now, she would have voted differently. But she also defended her reasoning, saying that "I do not think that that (was) a necessarily wrong judgment at the time."

Edwards contrasted his current view of the 2002 vote with Clinton's.

"I think one difference we do have is I think I was wrong. I should never have voted for this war," Edwards said. "And this goes to the issue that Senator Obama raised a few minutes ago. He deserves credit for being against this war from the beginning. He was right. I was wrong." (Obama, who did not become a U.S. senator until 2005, did not vote on the war resolution.)

Clinton and Edwards also differed on the issue of anti-terrorism, when Edwards said the Bush administration had used the idea of a "global war on terror" as a "bumper sticker" to justify a wide range of controversial policies. Clinton said she disagreed with characterizing the war on terror as a "bumper sticker" and said that "I believe we are safer than we were. We are not yet safe enough."

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