Senate rejects Iraq redeployment motions

The politics of troop redeployment
On Capitol Hill, the two parties' competing assessments previewed likely lines of attack little more than four months before Election Day.

Republicans are working to hang onto control of Congress and overcome polls showing the public favors a shift to Democrats. Faced with problems of their own, Democrats are seeking to capitalize on voter discontent with Bush's handling of the war.

In a fiercely partisan debate over two days, Senate Republicans opposed any timeline and painted Democrats as reckless with national security. The GOP said a premature pullout and a public pronouncement of any such plan would risk all-out civil war, tip off terrorists, threaten U.S. security and cripple the Iraqi government just as democracy was taking hold.

"A policy of retreat," declared Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said leaving Iraq would "risk disaster" there. "Withdrawal and fail, or commit and succeed," he said, laying out the choice as Republicans see it.

Many Democrats, for their part, chastised Republicans who, they said, blindly backed the president. They suggested that the GOP would pay a price in November for standing with Bush's war policies.

"A rubber-stamp approach, voting in lockstep to support the status quo," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said, summing up the Democratic view of the GOP.

"It's wrong to affirm that 'stay the course' is a strategy for success," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said.

From Capitol Hill to campaign tactics
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have staged debates on Iraq for two weeks, with both sides maneuvering for the political upper hand in a midterm election year. Both the House and Senate soundly defeated withdrawal timetables last week, the Senate votes showing up in campaign literature shortly after they were cast.

Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, challenging Sen. Mike DeWine for election in Ohio, issued a news release accusing the GOP incumbent of failing military families by "voting for more of the same in Iraq."

The GOP's Senate campaign committee e-mailed its own news release criticizing Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as an "ultra-liberal" who cast a "vote to surrender in Iraq."

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