Dems debate method of retreat from Iraq

NY Times:

At the moment that the White House is again trying to cast them as weak on national security, Democrats are debating their stance on the war in Iraq with new intensity, with some of the party's leading figures — including potential 2008 presidential candidates — sharply divided over whether the United States should set a deadline for bringing troops home.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, faced boos and shouts of "bring them home" from an audience of liberal Democrats here on Tuesday as she argued against setting a deadline, wading into what she called a "difficult conversation." Thirty minutes later, the same crowd applauded wildly as Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the party's 2004 presidential candidate, implored the Senate to back his call for a six-month deadline for withdrawal, and said he regretted his initial support for the war.

"It is essential to acknowledge that the war was a mistake — to say the simple words that contain more truth than pride," Mr. Kerry said, adding: "It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that resolution."

With President Bush making a high-profile visit to Baghdad, and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, having unleashed a sharp attack on Democrats over the war, Republicans said Democratic infighting over Iraq would hurt Democrats as the midterm elections approached.

On a day when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared on Capitol Hill to press the administration's message that Iraq was making progress, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, described Democrats as "all over the lot" on Iraq.

His Democratic counterpart, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, said that the war would prove a burden for Republicans, given its unpopularity and the perception that the White House has no withdrawal plan.

Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the House Democratic caucus shared "a pretty universal disgust" with the Bush administration's management of the war.

He estimated that 50 percent or more of the caucus supported the position of Representative John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has called for a speedy pullout of American combat troops.

That division was on dramatic display before thousands of liberals at a "Take Back America" convention on Tuesday.

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If they want to be the party of retreat and defeat the Republicans should let them. Kerry is particularly disengenious when you consider that he said the same thing in 202 that he had been saying in 1998 when he was getting his information from a Democrat administration. The enemy appears to be tougher than Kerry so he wants to quit and blame the Bush administration. Cut and Run Kerry is not a winning message.