Senators Rebuff Bush on Troop Plan

But the Dodd amendment was defeated, 15 to 6, with five Democrats joining all Republicans in opposition.

The committee's partisan vote strengthened the hand of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and a bipartisan group of senators backing a less forceful resolution of opposition.

Warner and his co-sponsors, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), went to the Senate floor last night to introduce their resolution of opposition, brandishing a raft of new co-sponsors, including Democrats Ken Salazar (Colo.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), as well as Republicans Gordon Smith (Ore.) and Norm Coleman (Minn.).

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Hagel said negotiations with Warner would begin immediately to try to find common ground on a resolution that would attract far more Republican support.

But they said that whatever language is sent to the floor will have to include the policy prescriptions that are in both resolutions: a statement against further deployments; a call for U.S. troops to be re-deployed to guard Iraq's borders, focus on counterterrorism and speeding up the training of Iraqi troops; and a call for diplomatic efforts to engage Iraq's neighbors in the pursuit of a political settlement to the war.

Yesterday's debate foreshadowed what could be wrenching deliberations next week, haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam and the more than 3,000 U.S. dead in Iraq. The Foreign Relations Committee featured three decorated combat veterans of Vietnam, Hagel, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), all of whom voted for the resolution of opposition.

Webb warned yesterday against drawing what he called superficial parallels between the Iraq and Vietnam conflicts, but Kerry evoked the same language he had used in the early 1970s as an antiwar activist: "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"

While Republicans called for lawmakers to support the troops in Iraq, Kerry and Dodd recalled a meeting they had before Christmas with Capt. Brian S. Freeman, a 31-year-old Californian who had sought them out on an Iraqi helicopter landing pad to express his frustrations with the war. Freeman was on his way home on a short leave to visit his 14-month-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

He was killed last weekend in an insurgent attack in Karbala.

"How many times are we going to repeat that before we accept our responsibility to get it right?" Kerry asked.

Opponents did not so much defend the president's policies as castigate the Democrats' chosen method of confrontation.

"We do not need a resolution to confirm that there is broad discomfort with the president's plan within Congress," Lugar said. "In fact, a vote on this resolution is likely to reveal far less discomfort than actually exists, since some members will vote against it because of its format."

But several Republicans indicated they would vote for a resolution of opposition if the language were toned down. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a presidential candidate, said he was in talks with Warner on a resolution he could embrace. Others were still awaiting some sign of compromise from the president.

"I have been waiting for the administration to extend an olive branch in an attempt to forge a compromise -- a compromise that clearly expresses our concerns while leaving no doubt in the minds of our troops as well as our enemies that we stand united as a nation," Voinovich said.