By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2003; 9:48 AM

Are some of the Democratic presidential candidates trying to have it both ways on Iraq?

In recent days, Democrats have escalated their criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war claims about the threat posed by Iraq. Four of the major candidates who voted for the war resolution last year are now raising serious questions about the administration's handling of the Iraq situation, while maintaining that they did the right thing by supporting the march to war.

Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), and John Edwards (N.C.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) have all stepped up their rhetoric about either Bush's pre-war claims or his post-war planning or both.

Kerry, for instance, has been very forceful in criticizing the way the administration has handled its post-war planning, saying that essentially the administration had no plan for securing the peace after the war ended.

"I hope they [the administration] have a strategy," Kerry told Washington Post reporters and editors in a luncheon meeting last week. "It seems to me that having been as intent as they obviously were on taking down Saddam Hussein, they would have had a more extensive plan for winning the peace and yeah, I'm actually, I'm really shocked and I am angry about the sort of arrogant absence of any major international effort to do what's really needed here to protect our troops and to guarantee a victory."

Asked if he was still comfortable with his vote authorizing the president to use force, Kerry did not hesitate.

"I have no question about the decision I made," he said. "Even Hans Blix said they weren't in compliance."

Then there was Kerry again on CNN Wednesday morning, criticizing not only the administration's post-war planning, but also raising questions about the administration's handling of intelligence, particularly the claim that Hussein was seeking the material for nuclear weapons in Africa.

When asked by Soledad O'Brien if he were "backtracking to some degree" now, Kerry responded: "It's not just the 16 words, it's all of our intelligence. I mean, we were told they had weapons that could be deployed within 45 minutes. We were told they had unmanned vehicles that had the ability to deliver. I mean, there are a series of things here. Colin Powell came to the Foreign Relations Committee and told us, in answer to one of my questions, the only reason to go to war were weapons of mass destruction. So I voted to give the president the power to go to the U.N. in order -- and to have the threat of force -- in order to hold Saddam Hussein accountable."

So now Kerry is saying his vote was based on faulty intelligence from the administration while still maintaining that he has absolutely no question about the validity of his vote. But if the intelligence was faulty, doesn't that call into question a vote based on it? Not in Kerry's view.

While raising questions about the administration's credibility, Edwards has not gone as far as Kerry, choosing to focus primarily on the administration's post-war failures.

"And unfortunately, this failure has been a long time coming," Edwards, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said recently. "Long before the war began I warned the administration that planning for the reconstruction of Iraq was as important as winning the war. They failed to learn that lesson in Afghanistan and they are failing again in Iraq."

So was Edwards comfortable with the administration's plan for post-war reconstruction when he cast his vote authorizing the administration to go to war?

"Did he assume that the administration would fail in post-war Iraq?" replied Edwards's spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri. "No. But they are [failing]. He's always been concerned, and he started talking about it in September. The best you can do is point out people's errors from the past and hope they learn from their mistakes. But in this case, they didn't."

Talking to reporters outside Wednesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Edwards turned up the heat on Bush: "When the president speaks, he speaks on behalf of the American people. George Tenet has accepted his responsibility, and that's good, but at the end of the day the president, when he speaks, has to take responsibility for what he says. The responsibility is not the CIA's, it's not anyone else's, it is the president's responsibility. And those 16 words were spoken by the president, and he has to take responsibility for them."

Gephardt has called for a congressional investigation of the president's prewar claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear arms. At the same time, he has said that the nuclear arguments did not play a role in his decision to support the war. Technically this might not be a contradiction. But it does raise the question, if the point was irrelevant, why call for a congressional investigation?

"President Bush's factual lapse in his State of the Union address cannot be simply dismissed as an intelligence failure," Gephardt said recently. "This president has a pattern of using excessive language in his speeches and off-the-cuff remarks. This continued recklessness represents a failure of presidential leadership."

Gephardt was referring to the same president he proudly stood beside in November to tout his vote for the war resolution.

Gephardt spokesman Erik Smith explained his boss's position: "Whether or not the [nuclear] assertion was a factor [in Gephardt's pro-war vote], it shouldn't have happened."

Even Lieberman, who has been the most consistently vocal supporter of the president's on the war, has gotten in on the act. Accusing the president of failing to accept "any responsibility whatsoever for this serious mistake by his administration," Lieberman has also called for a congressional investigation.

"There's just one way to make this right," Lieberman said in a statement on Monday. "Rather than having revelations come out one-by-one in a series of trickles - as they have with the events leading up to 9/11 - it's time for a full, forthright, and bipartisan inquiry into the intelligence failures regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Why is the administration still resisting such an inquiry?"

On Wednesday, Lieberman went even further, calling for CIA Director George Tenet's resignation.

Yet Lieberman harbors not the slightest doubt that he had all the information he needed to make an informed decision to go to war in Iraq. Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera explained it this way: "Just because Democrats supported changing the regime in Iraq and saw this as a just cause, that doesn't mean they support the way the president went about accomplishing that goal nor the various and changing justifications he has put forth."

Rhetoric aside, the position of these four Democratic candidates is not that far from Bush's: That is, that the world is a safer place with Hussein gone, and even absent the nuclear threat, the war was justified.

So what's going on here?

Simply put, with anger among the party's base off the charts about the basis for going to war, the pro-war candidates can't afford to not challenge the president.

Many grass-roots Democrats were questioning the administration's assertions about the threat posed by Iraq long before the White House acknowledged last week that it should not have included the Iraq nuclear assertion in the president's State of the Union speech. War opponents questioned the administration's claims about Hussein's links to al Qaeda, Iraq's ability to launch a quick strike against U.S. allies in the region and the Iraqi government's alleged attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to be used as centrifuges for enrich uranium. (See The Post's story, Bush Faced Dwindling Data on Iraq Nuclear Bid.

But the pro-war Democrats can't backtrack too far. In choosing to support Bush last fall, the four candidates decided to accept the administration's reasoning over the doubts of many in the party. To switch gears now would be to acknowledge that they should not have done so.

With Vermont Gov. Howard Dean surging, it's clear that he is being rewarded at least in part for his consistent stance against the war. In forums in Iowa and New Hampshire, the war issue has become an even hotter topic in recent weeks, with voters pressing some of the pro-war candidates to reconcile the growing doubts about a key reason for going to war with their votes on the matter.

The pro-war candidates may be able to mollify some of the base by stepping up the anti-Bush war rhetoric. And there's still a lot of time left before the primaries begin. Any number of scenarios could still play out, including the possibility that weapons of mass destruction may be found in Iraq, although that's looking less and less likely.

For now, the four pro-war Democrats will have to face the question of whether they are trying to have it both ways.

Earlier this week, a prominent politician went on national television raising questions about the Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

Here are parts of what he said:

"Did, in fact, individuals high up in the administration shape and mold this analysis of intelligence to serve their own purposes? I don't know. . . . We need to get the facts out, because this is in the interests of this administration. There's a cloud hanging over this administration."

He continued: "We can't shoulder this burden alone. We are stretched so thin in so many areas that we just can't carry it. That's why we need the United Nations. We need NATO. We need our friends in this. It's serious. We didn't think through this very well before we got into it and we're now dealing with the consequences of not thinking through this."

Who was this politician? Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)? Dean perhaps?

No, it was Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) recipient of two Purple Hearts earned during his tour in Vietnam.

Hagel is known for his independent streak, particular on issues of foreign policy, where he occasionally breaks with his party. But he is neither a lefty nor a renegade, voting with his party nearly 95 percent of the time and earning strong ratings from conservative groups.

Hagel's comments were almost indistinguishable from some of the things Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Kennedy have said in recent days.

Who would have guessed even three months ago that foreign policy might be as big, if not a bigger campaign issue than the economy for the president? But that's where we are today: A nation wondering if it was misled on the most serious of matters, and a White House in a defensive fighter's stance, trying to avoid a knockout punch.