Democrats unite in war debate

Republicans oppose pulling out of the war.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- At times passionate and at times partisan, Democrats and Republicans squared off Wednesday in an unprecedented Senate debate on the war in Iraq, as Democrats pressed the Bush administration to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by the end of this year.
Democrats squabbled among themselves about deadlines for withdrawal, but formed a unified front against the Bush administration's war strategy. Republicans assailed any talk of a pullout as a dangerous signal of weakness to terrorists and Iraqi insurgents that would forsake the thousands of American soldiers who've been wounded or killed.
"This administration's refrain that we're in Iraq as long as the Iraqis need us is creating a dependency of unlimited duration and gives the Iraqis the impression that their security is more in our hands than in theirs," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., one of the lead authors of a measure to begin withdrawing troops this year.
Republicans countered that any timetable, even an open-ended one such as Levin's, would embolden al-Qaida and insurgent fighters in Iraq, who want U.S. troops out.
"They are likely to say, 'We'll wait out the timetable and then we'll resume the violence and every means we can to destabilize this [Iraqi] government,"' said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Votes on two Democratic withdrawal proposals are scheduled for today.
Name-calling
The give-and-take was high-minded and serious amid pleas from both sides to end the political name-calling that had marked the buildup to the debate.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., his voice cracking with emotion, eulogized Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker of Madras, Ore., one of two soldiers who reportedly were brutalized, tortured and killed this week after being kidnapped in Iraq. Smith also called for politicians to temper the rhetoric that's characterized the war debate.
"My soul cries out for something more dignified," he said. Of advocates of withdrawal, he added: "I don't believe their dissent is unpatriotic." But he said a pullout would be "a tactical mistake of monumental proportions."
The floor exchanges hid a subtext of election-year and presidential politics.
Levin faced a competing Democratic proposal from Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, both possible presidential contenders in 2008, who urged withdrawing troops by July 1 of next year.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., whom liberals have criticized for not taking a stronger anti-war stance, said she opposed the hard-and-fast deadline that Kerry and Feingold proposed but would support Levin.
On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who's considered the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and is a strong supporter of U.S. intervention in Iraq, vigorously opposed the Democratic proposals. But he distanced himself from the Bush administration by arguing that the level of violence "remains unacceptably high."