• ACANDIRAQ_P1
• csmli-1
• stem-1

• ACANDIRAQ_P2
• csmli-2
• stem-2

'08 hopefuls harden views on Iraq war

Candidates have much at stake if the war outlasts President Bush's tenure.

from the September 14, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

But even as the week's hearings enhanced political polarization – exacerbated by the antiwar Moveon.org's incendiary ad in The New York Times referring to "General Betray Us" – the intense focus on Iraq also highlighted the intraparty skirmishing among the candidates. Just as last week, McCain took on Mr. Romney over Iraq during a New Hampshire debate, this week it was the Democrats' turn to fire at one another and try to shake up the nomination race.

Senator Obama, who consistently places second to Clinton by a substantial margin in national polls, delivered his third major foreign-policy speech of the campaign. His latest plan for Iraq calls on the Bush administration to begin pulling out brigades immediately, at a rate of one or two a month, until the withdrawal is complete. The plan did not appear substantially different from his previous proposals, and elicited criticism from more hard-line Iraq war opponents also running for the Democratic nomination.

On Wednesday, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D) of Connecticut took a swipe at both Obama and Clinton: "I was disappointed that Senator Obama's thoughts on Iraq today didn't include a firm, enforceable deadline for redeployment, and dismayed that neither he nor Senator Clinton will give an unequivocal answer on whether they would support a measure if it didn't have such an enforceable deadline."

Senator Dodd's critique highlighted the fact that the top two Democratic hopefuls have been the most cautious in their prescriptions for Iraq. Another candidate, former Sen. John Edwards (D) of North Carolina, also sought to break through by purchasing TV time on MSNBC to deliver his own speech right after Bush's address to the nation.

Analysts are skeptical that any of this week's jockeying, while having the air of a watershed moment in the 4-1/2 year old war, will do much to alter either public opinion on the war or the shape of the presidential contest.

"I'm beginning to think that in many ways the American people are exhausted by this whole issue," says Leon Panetta, a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and President Clinton's former chief of staff. "There are so many voices out there, and it's really tough to break through, particularly if you don't have an answer that's so unique that everybody says, 'oh my God, why didn't I think of that?' "

Mr. Panetta, who now runs a think tank in California, also regrets the Moveon ad as "over the line," adding that it put the Democrats on the defensive and gave the GOP a rallying point. "It pulls the Democrats to one side and makes it much more difficult to bring them along on any kind of alternative [Iraq strategy]," he says.

1 | Page 2