In Shift, Allen Launches Harsher Critique of Iraq

When Bush left, Allen met with reporters and indicated he didn't agree with all the president's language.

"The president has his ideas on Iraq, John Warner has his and I have mine," Allen said.

But Allen sometimes gives conflicting signals. A few minutes after saying that a new approach may be needed, Allen dodged reporters' questions by saying he does not want to "Monday-morning quarterback" the management of the war.

Webb, a Vietnam veteran who has a son in the Marines in Iraq, said Allen and other Republican candidates this year are now saying things "very similar to what I have been saying for two and a half years."

Six months before the war began, Webb wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post in which he warned that the invasion of Iraq would diminish U.S. standing around the world and make U.S. troops a target for "50,000 terrorists."

"I'm very glad people on the other side are finally allowing some of the realism to step forward," Webb said.

Webb and Allen still disagree broadly on the war. Allen scoffs at suggestions that the United States should withdraw from Iraq without a decisive victory that would ensure that the country would not become a haven for terrorists.

"I want our troops home," Allen said Friday. "And I want our troops home in victory, not defeat."

Webb said troops have done all they can militarily, so they should be gradually repositioned to other Arab nations.

But Allen appears to be adjusting his language on Iraq to try to diminish Webb's appeal to voters concerned about the war.

A Washington Post poll last week showed that 54 percent of likely Virginia voters think the war was not worth fighting. But the 41 percent of voters who say the war in Iraq is extremely important split their votes evenly between Allen and Webb.

"Allen is sending a signal to voters who naturally vote Republican but who are also concerned about the war that, 'Yes, I understand you are concerned, and I can see this is not going as well as you thought,' " said Sean O'Brien, executive director of the Thomas C. Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.

Allen has recently tied himself increasingly to Warner, whose popularity in Virginia is higher than Bush's. The two have begun campaigning across the state together and appear together in a television commercial released Friday.

O'Brien said Allen appears to be trying to reconcile his past strong support for the war with the reality on the ground in Iraq. But O'Brien said it's always dangerous for politicians to seem inconsistent as an election approaches, as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) found when he ran for president in 2004 and Bush labeled him a flip-flopper.

"Some people would argue that [Allen] is just pandering and going with the wind, and others might say he is responding to the concerns of his constituents," O'Brien said.