Sen. Lieberman Goes His Independent Way

For Lieberman and McCain, the big worry is that Bush will order too small a troop increase to make a difference. "Unless you believe all is lost, we've got to do everything we can to win," Lieberman said.

Upon hearing of his colleague's comments, Durbin sighed and shook his head. "Joe Lieberman said that?" he asked.

Democrats grumble off the record that Lieberman is muddying an increasingly unified Democratic message on Iraq, but their public comments are cautious and generally complimentary. They pretended not to notice his brief appearance at the Library of Congress retreat, which overlapped with the AEI forum.

"It's important to hear a lot of views, which is quite different from what happens in the White House," Schumer said. Or, as Reid put it: "Joe Lieberman could so easily be with us, but he doesn't want to be. I respect that. He's a good man."

On Dec. 29, during a quiet holiday week in Washington, Lieberman published an opinion piece in The Washington Post headlined, "Why We Need More Troops in Iraq." It recalled an earlier Lieberman op-ed, published in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 29, 2005, headlined, "Our Troops Must Stay." That piece, which undercut a growing Democratic call for a withdrawal from Iraq, spurred antiwar candidate Ned Lamont to challenge Lieberman in last summer's Democratic primary. Lamont, a Greenwich millionaire and political neophyte, wound up winning the primary.

Lieberman's opposition to an Iraq withdrawal was not a radical position. It followed mainstream Republican thinking, and some Democrats shared the view. Sending more troops to Iraq is proving far more controversial. Two GOP senators who face potentially tough 2008 reelections, Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Susan Collins of Maine, have already said they oppose it. Other Republicans have expressed strong reservations.

One Lieberman trait that particularly rankles Democrats is his abiding loyalty to Bush. A few days after the Wall Street Journal published the senator's op-ed piece, Lieberman lectured at a foreign policy conference. "It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be commander in chief for three more critical years," he said, "and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."

The senator was a bit more measured Friday, but his point was clear.

"The president of the United States gets this," Lieberman said. "I think he sees the moment that we are at in the larger war on terrorism and the significance of how we conclude the war in Iraq, how devastating it would be to the Iraqis, to the Middle East, to America if we simply withdrew. He needs our support."