WASHINGTON — Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York backed legislation Tuesday to cut off funds for most combat operations in Iraq by the end of March, the first time the top two Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed a firm deadline to end the war.
The dual announcements, which were made separately, underscore the powerful influence of the antiwar movement on the 2008 Democratic primaries. All the leading Democratic presidential candidates now back a definite timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who follows Clinton and Obama in the polls, has called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Iraq war vote: An article in Wednesday's Section A about congressional debate on the Iraq war said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) cosponsored a measure to establish a withdrawal timeline. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is the cosponsor with Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.). The article also misquoted Philippe Reines, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), regarding her support for the withdrawal amendment and a second one to cut off funding for most combat operations in Iraq by April. Reines said Clinton supported "the underlying amendments," not "the underlying arguments."
Leading Republican candidates, in contrast, support President Bush's strategy of boosting troop levels in Baghdad and Al Anbar province to contain sectarian violence and encourage a political settlement among the country's warring Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities.
Neither Clinton nor Obama will actually have to vote on the proposal to cut off war funding, which was introduced by Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Senators plan today to take only a procedural vote on whether to begin debate on the Feingold-Reid plan, as well as three other Iraq-related proposals.
The votes were scheduled to come ahead of key negotiations between House and Senate lawmakers over an emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both Obama and Clinton voted last month for a war spending bill that required the president to begin withdrawing troops no later than this fall and set a nonbinding goal of completing the withdrawal by spring.
Obama, who initially opposed setting a timetable for withdrawal, introduced a bill in January that set a nonbinding goal of removing combat troops by March 2008. And Clinton, long the most hawkish of the leading Democratic presidential contenders, recently endorsed a bill to revoke the 2002 resolution that authorized the war.
But until Tuesday neither had backed a firm deadline for completing a withdrawal, a key demand of the war's most ardent opponents.
"It's a step forward to have top presidential candidates embrace a plan to end the war," Eli Pariser, executive director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org, said Tuesday.
