The sabre-rattling on NAFTA is worrying, but take it as an opportunity

MICHAEL HART AND WILLIAM DYMOND

Globe and Mail Update

March 14, 2008 at 11:39 PM EDT

Thanks to some opportunistic electioneering in Ohio by the two Democratic hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Canadian interests – specifically, the North American free-trade agreement (NAFTA) – briefly became an item in the U.S. presidential campaign. While the campaign has moved on, the Canadian chattering classes remain fixated on the apparent threat to NAFTA, with many voices urging the government not to let the Americans bully us into reopening the agreement. As former officials involved in the negotiation first of the Canada-U.S. free-trade Agreement (FTA) and then of NAFTA, we are gratified to see such solicitude for these two treaties. On closer examination, however, there is both more and less to this story.

First the “less.” No, the Clinton-Obama political pandering poses no serious threat to NAFTA. Ohio is a vote-rich and union-rich state, two facts of life that make it almost axiomatic that Democratic politicians would rattle some sabres on trade. Ohio is also part of the U.S. rust belt that is undergoing some serious adjustments to changing economic conditions. Highly paid, unionized manufacturing jobs in that region have been declining since the 1970s. International trade contributes to this trend, though it has also fuelled the growth of high technology, financial services and other sectors in the U.S. Other factors, notably technological change, are more important causes of the rapid economic adjustments. Trade, however, is the politically easiest target. In the case of Ohio, it is not trade inside NAFTA, but trade with China and other low-cost suppliers that is burrowing into its manufacturing base. If anything, NAFTA has helped prolong auto-industry and other manufacturing jobs, by providing a more integrated North American trade and investment environment.

The evolution of the Ohio economy – and that of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and other parts of the rust belt – is too complicated a story to be captured in the images and slogans that make up a political campaign. Politics is about simplifying complex problems and phenomena, and offering attractively packaged solutions. Claims that NAFTA is part of the problem and that it can be renegotiated to create a better balance fall easily from the mouths of candidates fighting for every delegate they can get.

But that prospect is not real, as Austan Goolsbee, Senator Obama's economic adviser, admitted in an unguarded moment to Canada's consul-general in Chicago. It is unreal for any number of reasons. First of all, the FTA/NAFTA regime is now approaching its third decade. Negotiations began in 1986, to respond to problems that had been recognized in the early 1980s. The FTA came into force in 1989, NAFTA in 1994. Both have now been fully implemented; all transitional arrangements have been exhausted. Opening up NAFTA would consequently be tantamount to going back to the 1980s. Too much adjustment and investment have taken place since then, in reliance on the agreement's rules. By targeting NAFTA, the two Democratic candidates are promising a better yesterday.
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Senators Clinton and Obama insist their real concern has to do with the labour and environmental side agreements. Sen. Clinton seems to have conveniently forgotten that it was her husband and a Democratic Congress who insisted on these side agreements. They are integral parts of NAFTA and form part of the U.S. legislation that has implemented it. The environment pact has worked well, providing a spotlight on potential problems in the enforcement of domestic environmental laws. The labour pact has been less active, not because of its terms, but due to a lack of credible complaints. If the U.S. has serious proposals for updating these agreements, Canada should be prepared to look at them with an open mind.

So much for the less, what about the more? Is there anything Canadians should be worried about? Yes, there is.

IF THINGS GET UGLY

Washington is going through one of its periodic protectionist moods on trade and investment. For all their talk about reaching out more and working with their friends and allies after the Bush administration is gone, Democrats show little interest in enhancing the global role and image of the U.S., when they talk threateningly about unilateral actions on trade. If our neighbours elect a Democratic president, Senate and House on Nov. 4, things could get ugly, as a falling U.S. dollar, the credit crunch and serious troubles in the housing market add to recession anxieties.

The target for much of that ugliness will be China and other low-cost suppliers to the U.S. consumer market. Most Americans do not have much understanding of the role of these suppliers in maintaining U.S. economic activity. Both politicians and the public fail to realize the benefit of Chinese manufacturing goods produced to U.S. design and using U.S. technology. A recent University of California study found that, of an Apple iPod sold in the U.S. for $299, $160 goes to American companies that design, transport and retail iPods. Only $4 stays in China with the firms that assemble the devices.

Canada will not be a direct target of know-nothing economics that believes trade is bad and no trade is good. But we could be sideswiped. Canada needs open global markets for trade and investment. Protectionism directed against any country hurts our economy. To forestall protectionist sentiment in the U.S., Canadians need to take a serious look at the Canada-U.S. relationship and consider areas where there is scope for constructive, co-operative engagement with the next administration. We should do this, whoever is sworn in as president next Jan. 20.

The Canada-U.S. relationship has drifted for more than a decade. It came close to coming off the rails in the Martin years. Dialogue at the most senior levels of government almost ceased, as petulance and prickly self-righteousness became the salient characteristics of Canadian management of the relationship. The Harper government brought maturity and perspective, but it is still difficult to discern to what purpose the Prime Minister wants to put this civility. He urgently needs to fill that gap, and no later than the end of this year. Specifically, he needs to reconnect Canadian policy with Canadian interests. Ministers and officials, now devoting resources to minor trade agreements with minor trading partners – that includes the European Union – need to refocus their energy on matters that count. As it stands, to use a Texan saying, Canadian trade policy is “all hat and no cattle.”

THICKENING BORDER

Ideas and initiatives have always had to come from Canada because Americans do not devote a lot of thought to the Canada-U.S. relationship, and when they do come up with ideas, Canadians are quick to see these as threatening. It will be better for Canadians to begin mapping out what kind of agenda meets the interests of both countries. Finding an answer big enough to interest American politicians and not so big as to frighten Canadian politicians will tax the imagination of officials and others interested in Canadian public policy. In our view, Canadians need to work out a plan to deal with these concerns:

What steps can be taken to achieve a more open and more secure border for cross-border trade and investment? Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the border has been thickening, to the detriment of trade.

What can we do together to promote our common interests in the security of the Arctic, the sustainable exploitation of Arctic energy supplies, and environmentally responsible navigation through Arctic waters? Russian and other claims in the high Arctic could be problems and need to be contained by well-thought-through efforts to establish a Canadian presence there. U.S. support will be critical.

What kind of legislative and other programs can we pursue in order to ensure long-term North American energy security?

What further steps can be taken to promote cross-border regulatory co-operation? As the two economies have become more integrated, small, incidental regulatory differences are adding to costs and reducing wealth-creating trade and investment opportunities.

What kind of institutional capacity do we need to have in place to facilitate and promote the governance of North American economic and security concerns and to ensure appropriate co-operation at the state/provincial and legislative levels?

What steps can we take to work together in promoting global peace, security and development, particularly in Afghanistan and other troubled states?

What do we need to do together to address global and cross-border environmental issues?

On some of these matters, direct bilateral interests are at stake. On others, we share values and goals that arise from our common humanity. Canadians like to make a difference in world affairs. The U.S. is the one country that has much in common with us and has the capacity and resources to make a major difference. We can be more effective if we work with the Americans, not at cross-purposes.

At one level, the sabre-rattling on NAFTA is worrisome. At another, it is a wakeup call and an opportunity. Let's seize it.

Michael Hart is Simon Reisman professor of trade policy at Carleton University's School of International Affairs. William Dymond is Senior Executive Fellow at Carleton's Centre for Trade Policy and Law. Both are former federal officials.

Democrats' Chances to Alter Iraq Strategy Dwindling

Reid Says Next Showdown May Not Occur Until New War-Funding Request, Perhaps Early Next Year

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A10

Senate Democrats' failure to reach agreement with wavering Republicans on legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq forced party leaders to concede yesterday that they are running low on options for altering President Bush's war strategy this year.

The breakdown, coming at the end of days of debate over defense policy legislation, makes it increasingly likely that Congress will conclude 2007 without passing a single Iraq bill of policy-altering significance. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday that the next big Iraq showdown could come over an emergency war-funding bill that may not be considered until early next year, as he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turn their attention to the domestic policy front, where Democrats' prospects for success are brighter.

"We've done a lot of talking," Reid said of efforts to attract GOP votes. But the bottom line is: "People either want something or nothing."

One of the few remaining windows for Democrats on Iraq is on the spending front. Until war funding is secured for the next year, Democrats say that action to force Bush to change course is still possible, said Reid spokesman Jim Manley.

The latest attempt to find consensus fizzled late Thursday. Last week, Democrats failed to pass a proposal to bring home most troops by next June and to narrow the U.S. mission. But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (Mich.) still held out hope that at least 10 Republicans -- enough to break a filibuster by Bush's GOP allies -- might agree to a more flexible June goal.

Both sides were optimistic about a deal until Republican negotiators demanded that the timetable be pushed from June to sometime after the 2008 presidential election. Levin balked.

"It introduces a political element, putting it into the next administration," Levin explained. "For a lot of Democrats, that's inappropriate."

Levin and the Republican negotiators, Sens. George V. Voinovich (Ohio) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), tried to blend several proposals that have been floating around, including the Democratic plan to specify a withdrawal deadline, new Pentagon reporting requirements that some GOP moderates have been advocating and a bipartisan initiative -- co-sponsored by Alexander -- to turn last year's recommendations by the Iraq Study Group into law.

It was Alexander's idea to extend the time frame, to match the 15-month transition period that the study group recommended. But even with the additional six months, Voinovich could not promise Levin a large number of Republican votes. And when Levin shopped it around in his caucus, the response was an emphatic no.

The House and Senate will debate fiscal 2008 defense spending in the coming weeks. Although war opponents are expected to renew their bid to restrict Iraq funding as part of the debate, some Democratic leaders are cool to the idea of holding up the entire Pentagon budget. The administration is expected to make an additional request for Iraq funding, but action on that package could be delayed until February. "I think that's where you're going to see the next dogfight," Reid predicted.

War opponents are bound to be disappointed if the Iraq debate slows down. Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), an outspoken antiwar Democrat, even protested a stopgap resolution approved late Thursday that would keep government funds flowing beyond the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year, while Congress completes work on the next fiscal year's spending bills. The resolution, Feingold noted, would also extend Iraq funding.

"We need to keep the federal government operating and make sure our brave troops get all the equipment and supplies they need, but we should not be giving the president a blank check to continue a war that is hurting our national security," Feingold said.

But at a certain point, Levin said yesterday, Democrats must concede to political reality. Despite voter disapproval with both the war and Bush, only a handful of Senate Republicans have switched sides on binding Iraq legislation.

"We can't break a filibuster," said Levin, referring to the 60-vote threshold that GOP leaders have demanded on Iraq bills. "We spent a lot of time on it. We just didn't succeed."

Democrats did attach three Iraq-related amendments to the defense bill this week: a statement of support for a federalist-style political system; the creation of an independent commission to investigate contracting abuse; and the easing of restrictions for Iraqi refugees.

The party's liberal base would prefer that Democrats take a more defiant approach, refusing to yield to Republican procedural objections even if it brings the Senate to a standstill.

But Levin said: "There's so much that we can do here, in the majority, that we can succeed on. Unless there's some prospect that we can accomplish our goal, it seems to me it would be almost a sign of weakness" to draw out the Iraq fight on the floor. "I don't think we have to prove our commitment to bringing an end to this war, changing the mission," he added.

For a Democrat, Options in Iraq Could Be Few

Hopefuls Seen as Unlikely To Effect Rapid Change

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 29, 2007; A01

In their debate Wednesday night in Hanover, N.H., none of the three top Democratic presidential candidates would promise to have the U.S. military out of Iraq by January 2013 -- more than five years from now.

"I think it would be irresponsible" to state that, said Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

"I cannot make that commitment," added former senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) put it simply when she outlined the dilemma that Democratic presidential aspirants face on Iraq. "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," the party's front-runner said.

After President Bush's announcement this month of a limited troop drawdown and a continuation of the "surge" strategy through next summer, the key question for centrist Democrats in the presidential race is no longer whether U.S. forces will remain in Iraq but what size, mission and length a post-buildup, post-Bush force would take on. Even if the Democratic hopefuls decline to offer specifics, some of the people mentioned as possible defense secretaries under a Democratic White House offer a vision of a U.S. presence in Iraq that does not differ markedly from that of the Bush administration.

"There's a fairly narrow band of choice here, a relatively limited set of options," said David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert who has advised Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "I think a Democratic or Republican administration will be doing fairly similar things."

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said recently that he hopes to bring the U.S. presence in Iraq down to about 100,000 troops by the end of 2008, eventually falling to a long-term presence of roughly 40,000 to 60,000 troops, whose job would be mainly to back up Iraqi forces.

John J. Hamre, a Clinton-era Pentagon official mentioned as a possible successor to Gates in a Democratic administration, said in an e-mail that when a new president takes over in January 2009, the U.S. mission will include "force protection, overwatch (of Iraqi security operations), continued training/mentoring of Iraqi security forces and direct action operations against known bad guys." There is likely to be some patrolling by U.S. forces in Baghdad," Hamre noted, "but it should be considerably reduced."

At that point, said Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary also on the Democratic short list for defense secretary, the next president should talk to Iraqi officials about setting a target date for leaving Iraq but make it clear that the date is negotiable, depending on the political progress Iraqis make. Bush has fiercely resisted setting such a timetable. Danzig, an adviser on defense issues for Obama, emphasized that he was speaking for himself.

A third possibility for defense secretary, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former officer in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, said he agrees with the Democratic candidates that "the reality is that there is a likelihood of an American presence" in Iraq in 2013 but added that he hopes it would be a small, noncombat force. As for the mission under a new administration, Reed said the U.S. military will not have enough troops in Iraq to continue the current effort to protect the population and will have to focus on training, counterterrorism and perhaps border security missions.

Whoever the next president is, said retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, "the war in Iraq will go on at least for two or three years into the new president's first term."

The first clue to determining how many U.S. troops will be in Iraq in 2009 -- and what they will be doing -- will come in the spring. As the buildup ends and U.S. forces begin to draw down, the United States will assess whether Iraqi forces are able to take over providing security. The U.S. strategy of "clear, hold and build" depends on Iraqi troops and police ultimately being able to "hold." But there has been little evidence so far of their ability to do so in areas that are being contested, analysts note, especially in and around Baghdad.

"Recent U.S. government estimates state that the Iraqi security forces will not be capable of taking on this mission for at least 18 to 24 months," said Nora Bensahel, a security analyst at Rand Corp., "and I think there are reasons to be skeptical about this forecast, since that's the same time frame that U.S. government estimates included in both 2005 and 2006."

The second unknown is whether the U.S. standoff with Iran escalates, or other regional problems emerge that knock the U.S. effort in Iraq off track. "Wild cards that could alter the present trajectory include escalating tensions with Iran and/or Syria, as well as the physical or political meltdown of the Iraqi government in Baghdad," said Patrick Cronin, director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London.

Finally, the third factor is the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November 2008, with the vote likely to be shaped in part by how the United States stands in Iraq.

After years of worrying about "mission creep" -- that is, the expansion of its tasks -- the U.S. military will have to adjust to a shrinking mission. The ambitious goals that the Bush administration set forth in 2003 of turning Iraq into a beacon of democracy for the Middle East have been set aside, replaced by the more limited aim of a stable Iraq that does not fall apart, does not engage in a full-blown civil war and does not spill over into a regional strife.

As the force is cut, said Kilcullen, the U.S. mission will have to change to training, advising, supplying and backing up Iraq forces. The hardest part of this transition for U.S. officials will be giving up control of operations, he predicted: Once the United States sets broad parameters, it will have to defer to Iraqi officials on issues such as timetables and nature of the operations to be carried out.

But if the mission is narrowed too much or too fast, then the U.S. position in Iraq could deteriorate rapidly, some military experts argue. In this view, the U.S. military only recently has begun to get the strategy right, by moving troops off big bases and into the population.

If the United States "reduces troop strength" and "withdraws from living with the population," worried retired Army Col. Howard Clark, a veteran policy planner, it would be quite possible to have a full-blown civil war emerge, with Sunnis fighting Shiites and the Kurds combating Turkish forces in the north. This could be followed by Iranian intervention on behalf of the Shiites and Saudi intervention to support the Sunnis. Some possible consequences, he noted, would be spiraling oil prices, destabilization of Pakistan and further problems in Afghanistan.

Even if it goes well, Americans may not be happy with the result, officers who have served in Iraq warned. If the empowerment of local tribes and militias continues, the country may break up. And if it does not, said one Army lieutenant colonel who has served two tours in Iraq, "the most likely outcome is a Shia tyranny of the majority, either with our assistance or despite our opposition."

Ultimately, however, it appears now that no matter who inhabits the White House, the United States may be resolved -- or resigned -- to an enduring presence in Iraq. "America has taken a deep breath," Kilcullen said, "looked into the abyss of pulling out, and decided, 'Let's not do it yet.' "

Iraqi PM: Criticism 'Signals' Militants

By BASSEM MROUE – 57 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's beleaguered prime minister accused his American critics on Sunday of underestimating how hard it is to rebuild his country and failing to appreciate his government's achievements "such as stopping the civil and sectarian war."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said told reporters that some of the criticism from Washington sends "signals to terrorists luring them into thinking that the security situation in the country is not good." He offered no specific examples.

He also said U.S. critics may not know "the size of the destruction that Iraq passed through" and do not appreciate "the big role of the Iraqi government and its achievements, such as stopping the civil and sectarian war."

The Democratic-controlled Congress is growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of political reform in Iraq. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for al-Maliki to be replaced.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top American military commander, Gen. David Petraeus, are to report to Congress during the week of Sept. 10 on the degree of progress achieved since President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office concluded Iraq has satisfied only three of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for measuring progress and partially met two others.

None of those five benchmarks are the high-profile political issues such as passage of a national oil revenue sharing law that the U.S. has said are critical to Iraq's future.

During an interview broadcast Sunday by Iraqi state television, Crocker also urged patience with the Iraqis as they try to reach power-sharing agreements among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

"After 35 years of injustice under Saddam Hussein, there are some problems since liberation and the problems of 40 years cannot be solved in a year or two," Crocker said, speaking in Arabic. "What is important is that there is progress."

Separately, al-Maliki ordered what he said would be an unbiased investigation into last week's deadly clashes surrounding a Shiite religious celebration in Karbala, which many have blamed on the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr has himself demanded an investigation, while his followers have condemned the arrests of more than 200 people in Karbala — many of them supporters of the firebrand cleric. The bloodshed in Karbala saw more than 50 people killed and hundreds injured.

Al-Sadr, who has denied that the Mahdi Army provoked the confrontation, announced a surprise six-month suspension of the militia's activities last Wednesday following the fighting in Karbala, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism.

"After the procrastination we had seen in the past two days, we warn the Iraqi government and the executive authorities in Karbala if they don't open a fair, neutral and quick investigation, the Sadr office will be obliged to take unspecified measures," spokesman Sheik Salah al-Obeidi said in Najaf.

Though the Iraqi government and U.S. commanders have praised al-Sadr's move to stand down his militia, security forces have been keeping the Mahdi Army under pressure, saying they are focusing on breakaway factions believed to be receiving weapons, training and money from Iran — a charge that Iranians deny.

A statement from Sadr's office said that more than 200 al-Sadr followers have been detained in the past three days in Karbala province, making al-Maliki's praise of the decision to freeze the Mahdi Army nothing more than "ink on paper."

Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Raid Shaker, commander of Karbala police, said 300 detainees are being questioned over the Karbala incident.

Jawad al-Hasnawi, a Sadrist member of Karbala's provincial council, accused the prime minister of reneging on promises to stop detaining people in the Karbala violence: "They have taken us back to the era of the former dictatorship."

Elsewhere, military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox confirmed Sunday that U.S. forces arrested six people in a raid Thursday at the al-Sabah state-run newspaper in Baghdad. Fox said the military staged the raid on "actionable intelligence" and found illegal weapons when they searched the facility.

In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi commander said that British forces would officially hand over its base at a palace complex within a few days.

"Iraqi forces are already deployed and concentrated in the palace," General Mohan al Fireji said at a press conference. "The Iraqi forces are ready to take security responsibility in Basra."

Following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Britain controlled security across southern Iraq, but has since handed over three of four provinces to Iraqi forces. Britain's Ministry of Defense has previously said it hopes to hand security responsibility for Basra, the last remaining province, over to Iraqi forces sometime this autumn.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has consistently refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from the country, but Iraqi forces could take control of the country's second-largest city as soon as October, Britain's Sunday Times reported, citing unidentified government sources.

Slowly, Clinton Shifts on War, Quieting Foes

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and PATRICK HEALY

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — A little more than a year ago, before Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the race for the White House, she drew a storm of boos from an audience of liberal Democrats here as she declared that it would be a mistake to set a “date certain” for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.

But before another Democratic audience last month in Des Moines, Mrs. Clinton drew applause when she declared that it was time to begin “ending this war — not next year, not next month, but today.”

The senator, who voted in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq, has over the past year gradually repositioned herself on the war, the issue that her advisers have long viewed as the biggest obstacle to her winning the presidential nomination.

In a series of speeches, interviews and Senate votes, Mrs. Clinton has brought her stance much more in line with Democratic primary voters and the positions of most of her Democratic rivals — and has done it, so far, without sustained accusations of flip-flopping.

Her advisers said any evolution was the result of policy judgment reflecting the changing circumstances of the war, rather than a politically calculated repackaging. In many ways, her shift reflects changes in the nation’s view of whether a positive outcome is possible in Iraq.

The degree to which Mrs. Clinton has actually defused the issue will get a test on Saturday when she appears with fellow Democrats in a debate in Chicago before an audience of liberal bloggers, one of the most intensely antiwar constituencies in the party and one that has been particularly skeptical of — and often hostile toward — Mrs. Clinton.

But there is already evidence that she has made progress in reducing the intensity of the opposition to her among some of her most fervent antiwar opponents and in building support among the broader universe of Democrats who oppose the war.

A New York Times/CBS News poll in July 2006 found that among Democrats who said the invasion of Iraq had been a mistake, 56 percent said they had a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton’s performance. A year later, that figure had risen to 69 percent. Her standing during that period among all Democrats has also shown improvement. On the campaign trail, antiwar protests at her appearances are less frequent and less loud.

“Thanks to her votes on defunding the war and supporting a timetable for withdrawal, she has defused the war issue as a problem for her, and her 2002 vote for the war, to quite an extent,” said Medea Benjamin, a leader of the antiwar group Code Pink, whose members once regularly booed and heckled Mrs. Clinton whenever she spoke about the war.

“There’s still a passionate minority of us who believe the fact she won’t apologize for her war vote is a big deal,” Ms. Benjamin said.

But, she added, “she has gone a long way to changing things.”

Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal Daily Kos Web site, said Mrs. Clinton had “done a great job of blurring on the war.”

Mr. Moulitsas, whose Web site inspired this weekend’s gathering of bloggers in Chicago, cited Mrs. Clinton’s statements that she would leave a sizable military force in Iraq even after reducing the American military role there, saying that distinction was lost in the way she had presented her antiwar credentials.

“I don’t know if policy and rhetoric are aligned,” Mr. Moulitsas said. “But people don’t see the policy paper on our side; they hear what she says, and she talks a great game.”

Aides to Mrs. Clinton’s rivals argued she would still have a problem in the early voting states — Iowa and New Hampshire — where antiwar sentiments are high and Democrats are aware of her evolution on the issue.

“The people for whom the war is a No. 1 issue, she is always going to have a problem,” said Jonathan Prince, a deputy campaign manager for John Edwards. “The folks who are deciding their vote based on the war and are antiwar are quite aware that she has tacked back and forth on this.”

As a senator from North Carolina in 2002, Mr. Edwards also voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, but he later apologized for his vote — something Mrs. Clinton has not done — and has become an outspoken critic of the war.

Nonetheless, advisers to Mrs. Clinton’s opponents said she had made herself a much more elusive target. They said it had become more difficult to attack her for her history of supporting the war — and for refusing to apologize for her vote — than it had been when she had resisted setting a deadline for getting troops out.

The fact that Mrs. Clinton is not getting booed on the issue the way she was six months ago suggests, as some war critics and the senator’s advisers said on Friday, that it is not easy for an opponent of the war to jeer Mrs. Clinton as she is saying, “We need to bring our combat troops home from Iraq, starting right now,” as she did to a labor audience in Washington in June.

Mrs. Clinton has benefited because antiwar groups in Washington that have been pushing for Congress to cut off financing for the war have become more pragmatic, turning their heat on moderate Republicans who supported President Bush, and away from Democrats like Mrs. Clinton who once supported the war but have now changed.

Beyond that, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers suggested that she executed the shift with minimal political cost because there was no one moment in which she dramatically telegraphed a turn-around. From that perspective, they argued, her decision to resist calls from war opponents to apologize for her vote authorizing the war proved to be the right one, since it could have offered a critics an opportunity to label her as inconsistent — a line of attack that hurt Senator John Kerry in his 2004 presidential campaign and one that could have complicated Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to convince the nation that it can trust her to be commander in chief.

An adviser to one of Mrs. Clinton’s opponents, who did not want to be quoted by name offering praise for the way she was handling the issue, described the senator’s change as “more of a slide than a flip-flop.”

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers pointed to statements she has made and stances she has taken over the past year that have repositioned her. Those include her decision, this spring, to vote in favor of a troop withdrawal timetable, and her decision to support a cut off of money for the war. She signaled the shift with a speech to the Democratic National Committee in February saying, “If we in Congress don’t end this war before January of 2009, as president I will.”

Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of State, who is advising Mrs. Clinton on Iraq and other foreign policy issues, said, “Through the spring she became increasingly frustrated with the fact that the administration didn’t seem to listen.”

“You begin to kind of say, ‘O.K., now what? We need an answer,’ ” Ms. Albright said. “She was feeling a necessity to send a stronger and stronger message.”

New Populism Is Spurring Democrats on the Economy

By ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, July 15 — On Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly moving toward a full-throated populist critique of the current economy.

Clearly influenced by some of their most successful candidates in last year’s Congressional elections, Democrats are talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs and communities. They deplore what they call a growing gap between the middle class, which is struggling to adjust to a changing job market, and the affluent elites who have prospered in the new economy. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, calls it “trickle-down economics without the trickle.”

Populism is hardly new in the Democratic Party. Al Gore vowed to fight for “the people versus the powerful” in his presidential campaign seven years ago, and Republicans have long accused the Democrats of practicing “class warfare.”

But the latest populist resurgence is deeply rooted in a view that current economic conditions are difficult and deteriorating for many people, analysts say, and it is now framing debates over tax policy, education, trade, energy and health care. Last week, Senate Democrats held hearings on proposals to raise taxes on some of the highest fliers on Wall Street, the people at the top of private equity and hedge fund firms.

In the House, Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Financial Services Committee, convened party leaders and economists for a searching discussion of “globalization, outsourcing and the American worker — what should government do?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, offered the participants some blunt marching orders: “The American people want to know what we’re doing about their economic security.”

Their language, and to some degree their proposals, reflect a striking contrast with the approach taken by Democrats during much of the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton asserted that trade would create American jobs and that paying attention to the concerns of Wall Street would help the economy by lowering interest rates. The more populist tone is one indication of a broader debate among Democrats over economic policy and how much they should break with the careful centrism of the Clinton years embodied by Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary, who was a champion of free trade and cutting deficits.

So far, Republicans have, by and large, stuck by their free-market philosophy. They point to a rebounding stock market, declining deficits and steady if unspectacular economic expansion as evidence that conservative policies of tax cutting, less regulation and more trade are working.

But Democrats say they are responding to economic trends that the statistics in the headlines do not capture, including middle-class insecurity about jobs, the affordability of health insurance and the costs of education. The times have changed, these Democrats argue, and six years of Republican tax and economic policies have heightened the inequities.

Even as Mrs. Clinton has sought to associate herself with the economic growth of her husband’s administration, she, like other Democratic presidential candidates, has been expressing a sharp skepticism toward trade and globalization under President Bush. In recent weeks she has announced her opposition to the proposed South Korean Free Trade Agreement and denounced globalization that “is working only for a few of us.” She accepted the endorsement of former Representative Richard A. Gephardt, who spent much of his political career fighting what he asserted were unfair trade agreements.

And Mrs. Clinton has increasingly focused on “rising inequality and rising pessimism in our work force,” and suggested that another progressive era is — and ought to be — at hand.

Former Senator John Edwards, another Democratic candidate, staked out similar positions months ago and regularly notes that in the last 20 years, “about half of America’s economic growth has gone to the top 1 percent.” Mr. Edwards praises recent efforts to raise taxes on private equity and hedge funds. His campaign manager, former Representative David E. Bonior, notes that Mr. Edwards has been sounding these themes since his first presidential campaign in 2004.

“John Edwards was there at the beginning of this,” Mr. Bonior said.

While campaigning in Iowa last week, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, suggested that even those who followed the standard advice for coping with a globalized economy — get more education for higher-skilled jobs — were losing out.

“People were told, you’ve got to be trained for high-tech jobs,” Mr. Obama said, “and then it turned out that some of those high-tech jobs were being outsourced. And people were told, now you need to train for service jobs. And then it turned out the call centers were moving overseas.”

It is not unusual for candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to move left in the primary season; Mr. Clinton himself touched on some of these populist themes in his 1992 campaign. But all the major Democratic candidates for president are promising to use government to ease the insecurity of the middle class, on issues like education and health care.

Sixteen months before the election, with their domestic platforms being formed, these candidates are proposing, for example, to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the most affluent Americans and, in some cases, redirect that money to expanded health care. On the campaign trail and in Congress, Democrats are also talking about expanding assistance for college and help for workers who lose their jobs to cheaper labor abroad.

Democrats have also been pushing for legislation that would allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare with the pharmaceutical industry, a favorite target of the economic populists.

Democratic leaders say that unless Congress restores the confidence of the middle class, it will be hard to sell Americans on more trade or even an immigration overhaul.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to do trade agreements, immigration reforms or any of these other kinds of reforms,” Ms. Pelosi said, “until we present a positive, aggressive economic agenda to the American people — until they know where they stand, now and in the future.”

Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, said, “Trade may not be the reason, or the number one reason, they’re losing their jobs, but they think it is.”

Democratic leaders in the House recently announced that their legislative priorities did not include the renewal of the president’s “fast track” authority to negotiate new trade agreements, which expired this month. First, they said, they want to find ways “to expand the benefits of globalization to all Americans.”

There is anxiety on both left and right of the Democratic Party about this new populism. Many on the left worry that the Democratic establishment is merely paying lip service. They are skeptical about the party leaders’ loyalties, noting that many rely on huge contributions from Wall Street, and many have a long commitment to a free-trade agenda. Democratic leaders have, in fact, tried to advance some trade agreements this year, only to meet with substantial resistance within their caucus. Many of the new populists also see the Democratic establishment as far too cautious in confronting what they see as broad inequities in the tax code.

At the same time, centrist Democrats, like those at the research group the Third Way, worry that the party is veering left away from the optimistic, pro-growth, business-friendly policies that Mr. Clinton championed.

But many Democrats argue that this is an inevitable response to the dislocation and unease in much of the country, which was a crucial factor in the party’s victory in Congress last November. The case for populism is made most powerfully by the Democrats who were elected to Congress last fall. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who defeated a Republican incumbent with an attack on the trade and economic policies of recent years, said he was convinced that the populists were on the rise. He noted that he carried Ohio by 12.5 percentage points two years after John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, lost the state by only about 2 percentage points, and with it the presidency.

“That’s because of the economic populist message,” Mr. Brown said. “They voted minimum wage, they voted trade, they voted student loans, they voted health care and prescription drugs, over what their traditional conservative social values might suggest. And that’s the route to winning Ohio for Hillary or Barack or anybody else.”

Even Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who is viewed as far too much of an establishment, free-trade Clintonian by many populists, says the party must respond. “The party that deals with globalization and economic security will win,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Bush quiets GOP revolt over Iraq

By reporting some headway in his buildup, he seems to persuade lawmakers to wait for a September evaluation.
By Maura Reynolds and Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writers

July 13, 2007

WASHINGTON — Stemming a revolt among Senate Republicans, President Bush appeared Thursday to win two more months for his "surge" strategy in Iraq after arguing that U.S. forces had made some progress and needed time to make the country more secure.

Issuing a report to Congress on the war, Bush acknowledged that Iraqi leaders had made little headway in resolving the political conflicts that have paralyzed the government and fueled sectarian violence.

But he appealed to nervous Republicans to stand firm, arguing that lawmakers should not impose their judgments on the commander in chief.

"I don't think Congress ought to be running the war. I think they ought to be funding the troops," Bush said at a White House news conference.

Leading Republicans said they remained skeptical that the buildup of 30,000 troops would work, but they appeared to have accepted the president's plea to wait until a more comprehensive Pentagon assessment is released Sept. 15 before trying to force any change in course.

"In deference to the president … I think it's important that we wait until all the facts are in in September," said John W. Warner (R-Va.), former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman. Warner is working on a proposal that would call on the president to make plans to remove U.S. troops from most combat operations.

Unless there are significant improvements in Iraq in the next two months, lawmakers say, the president will almost certainly face a mutiny within his party's ranks.

Public support for the war has eroded to the point where more than two out of three Americans support a troop withdrawal over the next nine months. A sense of near-panic has set in among congressional Republicans, who lost their majority in Congress last year in large part because of opposition to the war. They fear further losses next year.

One House Republican who has not publicly expressed his reservations about the president's policy said many of his colleagues were losing patience with Bush.

"It's getting harder and harder to hold things together over here. There's a lot of unrest," said the lawmaker, who asked not to be identified in discussing discontent in his party. "People are saying, 'What are we doing? Just sitting here, waiting?' "

Two and half weeks ago, the president faced a potential tide of defections among congressional Republicans when Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, one of the party's most respected voices on foreign affairs, delivered an impassioned critique of the Bush's policy and urged a change of course.

Other GOP lawmakers followed. Three now support a proposal to force a withdrawal. A fourth, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, backs a measure that would require the White House to immediately scale back the U.S. combat mission in Iraq.

Collins said Thursday's report reinforced her conviction that Congress must act to force change. "I just don't see any grounds for believing the situation will be any different in September," said Collins, who is up for reelection in 2008.

Even with his popularity sinking to record lows and his policy showing limited success, the president has rallied his party one more time.

Over the last week, the White House has mounted a full-scale campaign to keep GOP senators on board. Bush's chief of staff, secretary of state and national security advisor telephoned into the night and spent hours at the Capitol and White House meeting with lawmakers one-on-one and in groups.

Publicly, Bush has displayed little doubt that his buildup will eventually succeed. "When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will be because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it'll be good politics," Bush said Thursday.

The president's tenacity had an effect on Republican senators, Collins said. "It may have caused some members in my caucus to hold off until September, despite having deep reservations, because the president feels so strongly," she said.

Though nearly a dozen GOP senators have called publicly for a new strategy; most have proposed only nonbinding legislation.

The vast majority of the caucus has vigorously opposed Democratic proposals to force the White House to change course. The most modest of those proposals — a measure to mandate more rest time for troops between deployments — drew seven Republican votes but still fell four votes shy of the 60-vote supermajority it required.

"I don't think we're at a tipping point yet," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who has expressed reservations about the current policy but is heeding the president's call to wait.

In the House on Thursday, only four Republicans joined the latest Democratic move to pass a bill to end the more than 4-year-old conflict, just two more than supported a similar measure in the spring. The bill, which would require a withdrawal to start within 120 days of enactment and be completed by April 1, passed 223 to 201.

Most Republicans stuck with the White House, which promised a veto, arguing that a swift withdrawal would be disastrous for Iraq and jeopardize U.S. security.

"This bill is about beating up on the president and about scaring nervous members of Congress," said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.).

One reason Republicans continue to stand by the president may be that administration officials are suggesting the September report from the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, will be a much fuller assessment and will include options for new strategies.

"He will make recommendations for ways ahead based on several potential courses of action," said a senior military official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss internal plans.

The Pentagon and Iraqi commanders believe that by September they will be able to show more progress, including bringing a larger swath of Baghdad under control and lowering the level of sectarian violence throughout the country.

Sen. Coleman said he was confident that the administration would adopt a new strategy after September. "We're going to have a changed mission in Iraq," he said. "And we're going to have it by sometime next year. In fact, I anticipate that we are going to have significant troop withdrawals or drawdowns because we're not going to be doing what we were doing before."

Bush's formal White House news conference was his first in nearly two months. It exposed him to aggressive questioning when support for his presidency has reached its lowest level — 29%, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released this week — largely because of Iraq.

But taking the microphone in the White House briefing room also allowed Bush to present, at length, his thinking about the course of the war. The report, mandated by Congress when it appropriated money for the war this spring, found progress toward eight of 18 political and military benchmarks.

"Those who believe that the battle in Iraq is lost will likely point to the unsatisfactory performance on some of the political benchmarks," Bush said. "Those of us who believe the battle in Iraq can and must be won see the satisfactory performance on several of the security benchmarks as a cause for optimism."

In his comments, Bush cited some of the more promising conclusions. He noted that Iraq had provided the three brigades it had promised for operations in and around Baghdad. But the report said Iraqi forces "had difficulty deploying" the units at sufficient strength and had to pull forces from other areas.

The president praised Iraq for spending nearly $7.3 billion "to train, equip and modernize its forces," but acknowledged "the Iraqis have much more work to do," including passing a law to equitably distribute oil revenue among Iraq's regions.

In fact, the report went further, suggesting that Iraqi officials might fail to meet the benchmark: "It is too early to tell whether the government of Iraq will enact and implement legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to all Iraqis."

Bush argued repeatedly that persistence is necessary in Iraq to prevent new Al Qaeda attacks in the United States. He did not distinguish between the threat posed by the network controlled by Osama bin Laden and that from an Iraq-based group known as Al Qaeda in Iraq.

For months, Bush administration officials have talked about Al Qaeda in Iraq as an increasing focus of military concern.

"While AQI may not account for most of the violence in Iraq, it is the organization responsible for the highest-profile attacks, which serve as a primary accelerant to the underlying sectarian conflict," the progress report said.

Bush's language in recent months has been less precise, and he has often appeared to suggest that Bin Laden's group is conducting attacks in Iraq. In recent days, Bush has gone a step further, twice asserting that the groups are one and the same.

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th," Bush said Thursday.

Asked by a reporter whether he had evidence the groups operated together, the president retreated somewhat.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq has sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden," Bush said. "And we need to take Al Qaeda in Iraq seriously, just like we need to take Al Qaeda anywhere in the world seriously."

--

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

noam.levey@latimes.com

Times staff writers Julian Barnes, James Gerstenzang and Richard Simon contributed to this report.

A Consensus Waiting to Happen

By David Ignatius
Thursday, July 12, 2007; A23

The last time I remember Ambassador Ryan Crocker warning about a possible bloodbath, it was in September 1982 as the Sabra-Shatila massacre was taking place in Beirut. So when Crocker tells the New York Times that a rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could produce a human tragedy on a far larger scale, people should take notice. He has seen it happen before.

Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, described the dangers starkly on Monday in explaining what might happen if the United States withdraws its troops too quickly from Iraq: "The dangers could be a civil war, dividing the country, regional wars and the collapse of the state."

Those are the stakes as the Senate debates the military authorization bill this week. The daily death toll measures the cost America and the Iraqis already are paying, but Crocker and Zebari are right in warning that a sudden U.S. withdrawal could be even more costly: The violence that is destroying Iraq could spread throughout the region -- an inferno stretching across Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- with devastating consequences for global security.

Getting into Iraq was President Bush's decision, and history will judge his administration harshly for its mistakes in the postwar occupation. But getting out of Iraq is now partly in the hands of the Democrats who control both houses of Congress. History will be equally unforgiving if their agitation for withdrawal results in a pell-mell retreat that causes lasting damage.

The Iraq debate in Washington this week is intense and angry. But as with the Palestinian conflict, the rhetorical fireworks mask the fact that there's an emerging consensus on what the final result should be. Leaders on both sides endorse the broad strategy proposed in December by the Iraq Study Group: a gradual withdrawal that shifts the American mission to training, force protection, counterterrorism and border security. That formula gets wide support from members of Congress and administration officials alike. As a senior administration official puts it, it's "where everybody agrees you want to go." The problem is getting there.

The essential elements of the compromise that's necessary don't seem all that complicated. Democrats need to be assured that the troops are beginning to come out; the administration needs to be assured that they aren't coming out so quickly that it will undermine regional security.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates appears to recognize what's necessary, politically and strategically. He is said to favor an announcement by September that the United States will withdraw some troops from Iraq before year-end as a sign that it is committed to a "post-surge" redeployment. The opportunity for a modest drawdown will arise this fall, when two battalions, several thousand troops at most, are scheduled to rotate out of Iraq. One of those is a Marine battalion in Anbar province, where the administration has been touting U.S. success. A good way to underline the gains in Anbar would be to reduce U.S. troop levels there.

Another chance for compromise is the United Nations authorization for the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, which must be renewed this year. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants a plan to reduce the number of American troops in his country as much as any member of Congress does. Here's the real opportunity for "timelines" on withdrawal -- ones jointly negotiated by U.S. and Iraqi diplomats rather than imposed by Congress. In a perverse sense, that's the greatest gift America can bestow on the Iraqi government -- to engineer the joint "liberation" of Iraq from U.S. occupation, but "slowly, slowly," as the Arabs like to say.

It used to be said of the Palestinians that "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Sadly, that has been true for the Bush administration during the past year in its failure to shape a bipartisan policy on Iraq. The release of the Baker-Hamilton report in December provided an opportunity; Bush missed it. Another chance arose in late May, when Bush himself proclaimed that his strategy for the future was " Plan B-H," meaning Baker-Hamilton. But he didn't follow through.

The president should have gathered the members of the Iraq Study Group in the Rose Garden the next day and dispatched them to visit members of Congress. Sorry, Mr. President, but Democratic Study Group members Vernon Jordan and Leon Panetta would be more effective lobbyists right now than anyone from the White House.

There's broad agreement on the need to put Iraq policy on a sustainable path that will gradually withdraw American forces without producing the bloodbath that frightens people such as Ryan Crocker in Baghdad. But Bush and the Democrats are running out of opportunities to make it happen.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

President To Critics: Wait Till September

GOP Lawmakers Told to Be Patient For Petraeus Report

By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; A05

CLEVELAND, July 10 -- President Bush pushed back Tuesday against demands from Republican lawmakers to outline a new war strategy, urging them to hold their fire until Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, delivers a progress report in September.

Bush told a friendly audience here that the additional troops he ordered to Iraq have only recently arrived to join the fight. "I believe that it's in this nation's interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations, and I believe Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us an assessment of the strategy that he's putting in place before they make any decisions," Bush said at a town hall appearance.

His comments appeared aimed at tamping down the growing clamor among GOP allies on Capitol Hill for significant changes to the U.S. military mission in Iraq. White House officials fear that if left unchecked, the rebellion could result in widespread GOP defections on upcoming votes that could put even more pressure on the president to begin withdrawing troops.

Bush offered little in the way of a new vision for a smaller U.S. presence in Iraq down the road, something his aides have been suggesting he might do in the days ahead to help ease GOP concerns. But the president did say he would be glad to discuss "different options" come September, and he suggested that the United States could change its mission "in a while," with troops focused on protecting borders, fighting al-Qaeda and training Iraqi forces.

Key GOP senators have said in recent days that they cannot wait until September for a new approach, fueling speculation that the administration might change course. But the president insisted Tuesday that they must wait, offering little discussion of a new policy and repeating his familiar prognosis of the consequences of withdrawal and how it will be greeted by insurgents in Iraq.

"They know we're kindhearted, decent people who value human life, and they understand that Americans will recoil from the violence on our TV screens," the president said in response to a question. "And I know or I strongly believe that if we recoil and leave the region with precipitous withdrawals or withdrawals not based upon conditions on the ground, it's going to get worse, not better."

In his speech, Bush once again conflated two organizations, al-Qaeda in Iraq and the international network led by Osama bin Laden, saying that the same group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, is responsible for much of the violence in Iraq. While the Iraq militants are inspired by bin Laden, intelligence analysts say the Iraqi group is composed overwhelmingly of Iraqis and does not take direction from bin Laden.

Bush was in Cleveland for a day of events aimed at reinforcing his message to Congress on a variety of issues, largely domestic. He visited a company involved in manufacturing components for hydrogen fuel cells, to tout his energy plan, and then stopped by the Cleveland Clinic to talk about his health-care agenda. In between, he had lunch with community leaders. The president concluded the day at a town hall meeting of about 400 Cleveland area business officials.

At the meeting, a Pakistani American asked Bush what can be done to improve the nation's image among Muslims. The president urged, among other things, personal diplomacy. "You're more credible than I am amongst your -- amongst your pals there," he noted. "You can say, 'You're not going to believe America. You're not going to believe the country, where people from all different backgrounds, all walks of life can live in freedom.' "

Democrats Seek GOP Support in Votes on Iraq War

Deadlines for Troop Withdrawals To Be Considered

By Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; A08

With Republican support for the Iraq war cracking, Democratic leaders in the Senate are seeking to attract GOP support to force President Bush to begin withdrawing combat troops.

In a new series of votes on Iraq expected to begin today, Democrats will attempt to break the united Republican front that has sustained Bush and make their toughest push yet to enact firm dates for bringing the war to an end. So far, antiwar Democratic leaders appear unwilling to look for much compromise.

They are even skeptical of a proposal that just months ago would have seemed a daring challenge to Bush: to turn the Iraq Study Group's recommendations into official policy and call for removing troops from combat in 2008. The plan, sponsored by Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), has attracted support from several GOP senators. But Democratic leaders are reluctant to allow it into the mix because it does not include specific terms for a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"We have an opportunity in the next couple of weeks to truly change our Iraq strategy," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "For those Senate Republicans who are saying the right things on Iraq, they must put their words into action by voting with us to change course and responsibly end this war."

Last night, after conferring with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) said that she would consider voting for binding troop-withdrawal legislation -- the third Republican to do so, after Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.).

But most Senate Republicans, even those under intense political pressure in their home states, indicated last night that they are not prepared to embrace such binding time restrictions.

"The Iraqis need to take greater responsibility, clearly, and I'm not sure they are capable of taking the responsibility they need to take," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who is up for reelection in 2008 and who has faced a blitzkrieg of Democratic advertising for his support of the war. "But the idea of simply leaving is something I don't think is going to make us safer."

"I just don't think it makes sense to announce to your enemies what date you're going to begin withdrawing and what date you're going to complete withdrawing," said Sen. John E. Sununu (N.H.), another Republican facing reelection in an antiwar state. "I don't think that's good policy."

This week's votes are part of a debate on the annual defense authorization bill. The first amendment in the queue, scheduled for a vote this afternoon or tomorrow, would limit the number of troops eligible for Iraq service by extending the time that soldiers and Marines must spend at home between deployments. Republicans complained that the provision does not give Bush enough leeway but speculated that many of their colleagues will support it anyway.

The debate will overlap with a July 15 deadline for the White House to report on Iraqi government progress in meeting a list of benchmarks that Congress established in May, when it approved additional war funding. Bush has promised a full review of the war in September, once the troop-escalation plan has been fully implemented.

But in the past two weeks, skepticism within GOP circles has spread.

Three long-serving Senate Republicans have publicly repudiated Bush's Iraq strategy: Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), George V. Voinovich (Ohio) and Pete V. Domenici (N.M.). But like other Senate GOP war critics, including John W. Warner (Va.), none is endorsing a stipulated troop withdrawal.

Warner said yesterday that he would "withhold some ideas that I may have, which may be incorporated in one or more amendments," until after the July 15 deadline.

A big question mark is the fate of Salazar's proposal. The bill has picked up six GOP co-sponsors and has attracted interest from other Republicans as a way to change course in Iraq without establishing deadlines or other restraints.

The group's 79 recommendations were drafted by a 10-person, bipartisan team led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.). The report set a March 31, 2008, goal for withdrawing most U.S. troops; it received muted praise from Bush, who said he agreed with some of its proposals.

"I hope the president will pick up where the Baker-Hamilton commission left off and . . . get us out of the combat business and into a different role," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a co-sponsor of Salazar's measure. Amendments with withdrawal dates, he said, "won't go anywhere with me." But, he added, "now's the time to begin to get our combat troops out of the way."

Reid said yesterday that he is unsure whether Salazar's bill will come to a vote. "What we do has to be more than something that feels good," he said. "It has to be something that calls for real change in our policy in Iraq."

Reid said he had held numerous talks with Salazar about how to toughen the bill and make it more relevant to current conditions. "Is it going to be something that has some teeth in it? If it is, certainly I'll put my arms around it. And I think most Democrats will," Reid said.

A bipartisan group of moderates, led by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), is working on a compromise measure that would force a change of mission for U.S. troops, from combat to counterterrorism and border protection. He said the group will not call for troop withdrawals.

Reid has signed off on at least two withdrawal amendments. One would cut off funding for combat operations in the spring, and the second would begin troop withdrawals within several months, although without a firm date for completing the job. Rather, it would set a goal of withdrawing by spring, similar to the Iraq Study Group approach.

The latter may provide the most accurate measure of how much Republican sentiment has shifted in recent months. The Senate approved similar language in April as part of a war funding package, with just two Republican votes.

But as conditions in Iraq have worsened, Republicans have grown impatient with Bush's September timetable and wary about the political risks of supporting a deeply unpopular war. Just yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said the cost of the war has escalated to $10 billion a month since Bush deployed about 28,000 additional troops to secure Baghdad and Anbar province.

Underscoring the potential peril, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will target four 2008 Republican senators on their war positions in an advertising campaign scheduled to begin today.

The list includes Susan Collins (Maine), Coleman and Sununu, along with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

"Their effort to politicize [the war] is unfortunate," Coleman said. "This is a serious issue."

The Anti-War Liberal | Jan Schakowsky

Sunday, July 8, 2007; A08

Before the Oct. 10, 2002, House vote to authorize the war, with the Democratic leadership prepared to support President Bush, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and other liberals formed an opposition movement. Quietly, they went from lawmaker to lawmaker "asking people how they would vote, and if they were unsure, convincing them that they would be far from alone if they vote no." In the final tally, 126 Democrats, or about 60 percent of the caucus, sided with Schakowsky.

Three years later, Schakowsky helped found the Out of Iraq Caucus, which has grown to about 75 members. But when Democrats won control of Congress, her longtime friend and fellow liberal Nancy Pelosi of California became speaker, and Schakowsky was named a chief deputy whip, a crucial vote-counting post. From her new perch in leadership, the war debate has become more complicated than a simple rallying call.

Representing a liberal North Side district in Chicago, Schakowsky would face enormous anger from her constituents if she tempered her opposition to the war. But she is confronting both the limits and duties of majority power, and that has created friction with her antiwar allies.

"If we could pass it, I would stop this war today," she said. "But there aren't the votes to do that."

Angering war opponents, Schakowsky supported the first Iraq spending bill, later vetoed by Bush, although it continued to fund the troops and set no firm withdrawal date. She opposed the bill in its second version, which provided funding with no withdrawal terms.

"As far as the American people are concerned, they're done; they are done with this war. But it's really taken all this time to get there," Schakowsky said.

Toughest Encounter With Constituents: Before she announced her support for the first Iraq funding bill, Schakowsky convened local antiwar activists to break the news. "We had a very frank conversation. Not everyone was satisfied," Schakowsky recalled. But she told the group, "I really want to end this thing, and I think this is the best way to go."

Iraq-Related Claim to Fame: The stacks and stacks of e-mails opposing the war that Schakowsky started gathering before the 2002 vote. "I started going everywhere with them. Eventually, I had to have staff carry them along for me, because there were so many. We'd go to the floor, go to news conferences. It was a kind of a great visual."

Visits to Iraq: She is making her first trip in August.

Outlook: "There is decreasingly any way to defend this war and keeping our troops there. It's just not that far way. There's no way it's going to be good."

Most Persuasive Argument From War Supporters: "If you're not for the money, you're not for the troops."

The Conservative Democrat | Dan Boren

Sunday, July 8, 2007; A08

Washington was buzzing over a heated meeting between President Bush and 11 moderate Republicans who told the president that their support for the war was slipping fast. That same day in May, Rep. Dan Boren and a group of fellow moderate-to-conservative Democrats made the trip to the White House to hear Bush out on Iraq. The tone, according to Boren, was quite different.

"Over the last six or seven years, he's really been knocked as someone who does not try to build bridges with Democrats, and I think over the last six months to a year, his office has really tried to reach out to members like me," Boren said. The congressman even has his own dedicated White House liaison officer, Marty McGuinness, whose phone line is always open.

The White House knows that Boren is a man trapped between the conservative constituents of his eastern Oklahoma district and a Democratic Party pushing hard to seize control of the war in Iraq and bring it to a close. As the young congressman weighs his options, Bush is eager to put his finger on the scales -- so far, with success. This year, Boren was one of only 14 Democrats who opposed their leadership's war spending bill that included timelines for withdrawing troops.

But a powerful skeptic is whispering in his other ear: his father, former senator David L. Boren, whose criticisms of the war act as a counterweight to Bush's wooing.

"I'm frustrated, like most of the American people, by progress in Iraq, but at the same time, I understand that I'm not a member of the military," Boren said. "I'm just a member of Congress, and there's a fine line there that really shouldn't be broken."

Trips to Iraq: A seat on the Armed Services Committee has taken Boren to Iraq twice and secured him face-to-face meetings with the top commander there, Gen. David H. Petraeus, most recently in March of this year. "Morale was high," he recalled of the first trip in March 2005. "On that second trip, morale was not so great."

What His Constituents Say: Boren has visited the families of each of the dozen constituents who have been killed in Iraq. "Family members I met with earlier were definitely 'Stay the course' and all of that. Now they are much more tepid in their support. They want to see the young men and women come home. That's influential on me."

Outlook: Regardless of Petraeus's report, the decision will be up to the next commander in chief. "We're already in a presidential election," Boren said. "I think this will rest on their shoulders."

Most Persuasive Argument From War Opponents: "We could be using our resources in other parts of the world on the global fight against terrorism."

Sensing a Shift, Reid Will Press for an Iraq Exit

By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, July 7 — Democratic voters are not the only ones bitter over their party’s failure to use new Congressional power to force a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Senator Harry Reid, the occasionally obstreperous Democratic leader, is upset as well.

“We haven’t done enough,” said Mr. Reid, a onetime moderate who has evolved into one of the party’s most fervent critics of the war.

That view captures not only Mr. Reid’s sentiment but also the shifting political dynamic on the war, as public frustration remains high, the conflict dominates the presidential campaign landscape and senior Republicans have chosen to break with President Bush even as the administration has urged patience.

Sensing momentum from the new Republican defections, Mr. Reid and other leading Democrats intend to force a series of votes over the next two weeks on proposals to withdraw troops and limit spending. Democrats are increasingly confident they can assemble majority opposition to administration policies.

“It is going to be harder for Republicans to not sign on to something with bite in it, a clear Congressional assessment that change is needed,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “I think it is more likely there will be a majority around here that say we should begin to redeploy some forces by a certain date, and I hope it would be a larger majority.”

The coming debate will provide a showcase for senators from both parties to debate Iraq war strategy. The four Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate are expected to push their own antiwar proposals and views, and contrast their stances with those of Republicans, notably Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been among the strongest supporters of the war.

In the first round of debates about the war, there was Democratic anxiety about appearing unsupportive of the troops, and Mr. Reid sought to keep a tighter rein on his colleagues who were pushing for the strongest antiwar legislation. But in the shifting environment, Democrats are newly emboldened.

Mr. Reid said he now saw ending the war as a moral duty, and even if the Senate again falls short, he said, he would turn again and again to Iraq until either the president relents or enough Republicans join Democrats to overrule Mr. Bush.

“I think that each time these people vote to continue what’s going on in Iraq it is a bad, bad move for them and a worse move for our country,” Mr. Reid said.

In the six months since he took control as the majority leader, Mr. Reid, 67, of Nevada, has experienced the highs of leading his party and the lows of almost losing a senator to a critical illness and then losing an Iraq spending fight to Mr. Bush.

The Democratic inability to bring quick change, coupled with a Republican backlash to the rejected immigration proposal, has sent Congressional ratings plummeting.

“The Democratic Congress has lower ratings than President Bush,” said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. “You have to try hard to do that.”

Mr. Reid has also been hobbled by his fragile majority, reduced to 50-to-49 because of the extended absence of Senator Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who has been recovering from a brain hemorrhage since December. With most Senate action requiring 60 votes — the tally needed to cut off debate — much of the legislation that House Democrats rushed through in their 100-hour sprint has bogged down across the Rotunda, mired in seemingly endless procedural votes and Republican objections.

On Iraq, Mr. Reid has led a 49-to-50 minority as Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who caucuses with Democrats, has sided with Republicans on that issue.

As a result, when Mr. Bush refused to sign an Iraq war spending bill that included a timetable for withdrawal, Mr. Reid, with his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saw no alternative in May but to back down rather than open Democrats to charges of cutting off money to troops in the field. The outcome left many Democrats disenchanted.

“Some folks may have anticipated that the war would be stopped the Wednesday after the Tuesday election,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana. “But this is a complex situation that we’ve got in Iraq right now, and I think most of the people understand that we’re going to do the best we can do with what we have to work with.”

Activist groups aligned with the party said they recognized that reality as they put new pressure on wavering Republicans to join with Democrats on the war legislation.

“Senator Reid was not able to get it done, but ultimately it is the Republicans who are obstructing passage,” said Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq.

Democrats hoped to drive home that point in the renewed fight, with the annual Pentagon policy measure as the battleground. The leadership has put much of its muscle behind a plan by Mr. Levin and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, that would require a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days of becoming law and require most combat troops out by next spring.

Mr. Reid has also joined Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, in pushing a more confrontational approach that would end spending on most of the combat and significantly limit the role of American forces by early next year.

Another coalition of Democrats led by Senators Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who seeks the party’s presidential nomination, is pushing a plan to rescind the original authorization for the war, though it troubles some Democrats, who worry that any associated provision that allows troops to remain even for limited purposes could be interpreted as new approval to keep forces in Iraq.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, another Democratic presidential contender, is developing a proposal that would call for a troop withdrawal to begin within a month and be completed by next year.

“I think the public is so far ahead of us — certainly the Democrats are — on this issue,” Mr. Dodd said.

Though senior Republicans like Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico have called for a change in Iraq policy, they have indicated they are not ready to go as far as the Democrats. Mr. Domenici and other Republicans, including Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, have coalesced around a proposal that embraces the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which seeks to shift the use of American forces more to a counterterrorism role and sets a goal of a March 2008 withdrawal.

Many Democrats feel those recommendations fall short because they do not include a hard and fast requirement for troop withdrawal. Mr. Reid and his lieutenants were still considering their strategy toward that proposal, which had support from moderate Democrats, led by Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, and several Republicans.

The war clearly has consumed Mr. Reid. He said his emotions had been stirred by visits to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to meet with gravely wounded troops and his own calls to the survivors of Nevada residents killed in the fighting.

The impact of the wounded was reflected in an e-mail exchange with a staff member, who, during the war financing fight, relayed poll results that found 56 percent of Americans backed the Democrats, but that a sizable 37 percent sided with Mr. Bush.

“May the 37 percent see the pain and suffering I have seen at Walter Reed,” Mr. Reid replied.

North Korea Returns to Nuclear Talks

Interesting things to note:

1. China set up the meetings that led to the breakthrough on talks. It is clearly taking a forceful, proactive approach to these negotiations. China has apparently reportedly even withheld diesel and heating fuel from North Korea in September.
2. The arrangement that led to the talks was three-way talks between the United States, North Korea, and China in Beijing.
3. The North Koreans are being hurt by American action against their money-laundering activities, as reflected by the priority the North Koreans placed on having U.S. Treasury action against a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, on the agenda of nuclear talks. (I think this also reveals the North Koreans' goals in exploding their nuclear device). The bank, which has previously been in the news, purportedly holds the Kim family's bank accounts and had placed North Korean counterfeited cash in circulation.

Politicians' and diplomats’ expectations for discussions to end North Korea’s nuclear programs are low. As David Straub, a former U.S. diplomat involved in earlier discussions stated:

"[B]oth [the United States and North Korea] will almost certainly take even tougher lines."

Straub stated that the U.S. and North Korea need to change negotiating positions, and Democrats say that the U.S. needs to negotiate directly with North Korea.

Today's Washington Post editorial page warns that this supposed breakthrough could simply allow the Chinese and the North Koreans to alleviate pressure on the North Korean regime and for China to control its wayward client while North Korea gives up nothing.

The problem is that this is always true when negotiating with the North Koreans. But if our only real choice is to negotiate, the editorial is correct to place the onus for continued movement by the North Koreans on China. They made these talks happen, and they should be the focus of American pressure to see that they succeed.