Democrats debate war exit

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - As Republicans rejoiced at Democratic infighting over Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday shot back on the Senate floor, accusing the GOP of "blindly following" President George W. Bush's "dead-end" Iraq policies.

Clinton and fellow New York Democrat Charles Schumer, who both supported the Iraq war resolution in 2002, have opposed efforts by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Russ Feingold (D-Minn.) to pass an amendment imposing a July 1, 2007, deadline for complete troop redeployments.

Clinton and Schumer support a nonbinding alternative that would begin drawing down troops by the end of 2006, with no defined end date. Both symbolic proposals, doomed to defeat by the Senate's Republican majority, were debated on the floor late last night.

"By playing politics and blindly following the president, too many [Republicans] are deaf to the hue and cry about the failures of this administration in the execution of its policies," Clinton said.

"They may not have a war strategy, but they do have an election strategy," she added. "This is the road they took America down in 2002. It was a dead end for our country then, and it's a dead end now.

Many Democrats, especially Schumer, have argued that it's foolish to expose divisions at a time when public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed to Bush's handling of the war five months before the midterm elections.

"The public knows that George Bush got us into Iraq, they know he's the commander in chief, and they don't believe he has figured out a strategy that will show light at the end of the tunnel," he said in statement. "That is the overriding issue in the election."

But Kerry and Feingold, joined by Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), succeeded in pushing the issue to a vote, much to the delight of GOP leaders, who lambasted Democrats for "defeatist," "cut-and-run" strategies.

Republicans declined to offer their own Iraq amendments, opting to allow Democrats to debate each other over their dueling proposals and then vote both down.

"We're very happy to have this," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the second-ranking Senate Republican. "It's been interesting to watch the Democrats debate among themselves."

Clinton said she was infuriated by similar statements made by other Republicans, accusing the majority party of "politics at its worst, played over war."

But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading candidate for Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said, "Drawdowns must be based on conditions in country, not an arbitrary deadline rooted in our domestic politics."

This story was supplemented with Associated Press reports.