US:Supporting the president's strategy on Iraq may be a liability when the war-weary electorate votes, writes Denis Staunton
At the end of a week that was billed as a turning point in the American debate over Iraq, US president George Bush can feel confident that his unpopular war strategy will survive whatever political challenges Democrats present in the coming weeks.
Congressional Democrats acknowledge that they see little prospect of attracting enough Republican support to force the president to change course, even if many in Mr Bush's party fear the impact of the war on their performance in next year's elections.
"While I welcome the modest drawdown of our troops that the president has ordered, it is not a sufficient response to the lack of political reform by Iraqi leaders," said Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who faces a tough battle to retain her Senate seat in Maine next year.
"I continue to believe that an immediate change in mission is needed, which would allow a far more significant but responsible reduction in the number of our troops deployed in Iraq.
"We should not wait another six months to change the mission."
Promising to bring 20,000 troops home by next summer if conditions in Iraq do not deteriorate, Mr Bush made clear that, by next July, there will still be more US troops in Iraq than there were before the current military surge started earlier this year.
Republicans will thus face voters at next year's presidential and congressional elections with well over 100,000 US forces still fighting an unpopular war. "Those of us who believe success in Iraq is essential to our security, and those who believe we should begin bringing our troops home, have been at odds.
"Now, because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home.
"The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together," Mr Bush said on Thursday.
There is little chance of such a coming together in Congress, as Democrats struggle to show their supporters that they are serious about trying to end the war.
Party leaders know that many Democrats were returned to Congress last year promising to force a change of course in Iraq but they have scant hope of finding a filibuster-proof majority to back a strong rebuke to the president.
Rhode Island senator Jack Reed said yesterday that Democrats would introduce legislation next week asking the president to accelerate the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
He said, however, that the legislation would set "goals" rather than deadlines for withdrawing more troops.
Democratic presidential candidates were unanimous in condemning the president's speech on Thursday, although frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are more cautious than their rivals on how fast and how comprehensive a US withdrawal should be. For their part, Republican presidential candidates rushed to back Mr Bush's strategy and front-runner Rudy Giuliani took out a full-page ad in the New York Times yesterday to criticise Mrs Clinton's questioning of Gen David Petraeus about progress in Iraq.
Mr Giuliani quoted Mrs Clinton as telling the general in a senate hearing: "I think the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief."
The Republican candidate said that Mrs Clinton's statement amounted to "saying that the general wasn't telling the truth," which he described as "character assassination".
Supporting the president may be a sound strategy for wooing Republican primary voters, who prize loyalty to their party leader, but it could prove to be a liability for the party's nominee when the war-weary national electorate votes in November 2008.