Murtha Stumbles on Iraq Funding Curbs

The strategy he would craft was designed to calm the nerves of the party's conservatives by fully funding the war, while placating the antiwar left by attaching so many strings to those funds that the president would not be able to deploy all the 21,500 additional combat troops he wanted.

To be sent to battle, troops would have to have had a year's rest between combat tours. Soldiers in Iraq could not have their tours extended beyond a year there. And the Pentagon's "stop-loss" policy, which prevents some officers from leaving the military when their service obligations are up, would end. Troops would have to be trained in counterinsurgency and urban warfare and be sent overseas with the equipment they used in training.

Pelosi endorsed the plan in concept but never the details. The plan surfaced Feb. 15 in an unorthodox Murtha appearance on MoveCongress.org, an antiwar Web site affiliated with the liberal activists of MoveOn.org.

It came the day before the House voted on a nonbinding resolution opposing Bush's additional troop deployments that Democratic leaders had been touting as a major rebuke. Murtha dismissed that vote as he promoted his coming plans regarding the war spending bill. "This vote will be the most important vote in changing the direction on this war," he said of his proposal. "This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge."

To many Democrats, that was not only impolitic, it was disloyal.

"He stepped all over Speaker Pelosi's message of support for the troops," said Rep. Jim Cooper (Tenn.). "That was not team play, to put it mildly."

Even after that Web appearance, some senior Democratic aides say Murtha might well have been able to save his plan if he had quickly laid it out before the Democratic caucus and marshaled Democratic leaders behind a defense. Instead, the House recessed for a week, Murtha disappeared from the media, and Democratic leaders were silent, saying they could not discuss Iraq legislation because no real plan existed.

In the face of an unanswered Republican assault, the Democratic rank-and-file cracked -- on the left and the right.

"While we're all for troop readiness, we're all for them having all the equipment they want," Matheson, the Utah Democrat, said, "I'd be very concerned about doing anything that would hamstring resources and commanders on the ground."

Indeed, Matheson and other Blue Dogs said the Democrats should concentrate on oversight hearings on Iraq policy, while refraining from binding legislation on the war.

The party's newly elected Iraq veterans favor a more straightforward approach than Murtha, establishing a legal timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sestak said. And the party's antiwar left is no less unhappy with what they see as half measures from Murtha.

"Congress has the authority, and I know it has the responsibility, to get us out of there. And we should use every means possible," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Calif.), a co-chairman of the Out of Iraq Caucus.

Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), another co-chairman who sits on the Appropriations Committee, is likely to try to tie the war spending bill to legislation demanding a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by a date certain, with the bill's money available only for the safe withdrawal of the troops.

Such legislation was precisely what Murtha hoped to head off with his recent Internet appearance, said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who helped connect him with MoveCongress.org. And Moran still believes the appearance ultimately will work to the Democrats' favor. "The cognoscenti is upset because he's not under their control," Moran said. "They would prefer he release his plan to a think tank, but he decided he wanted to communicate directly. He doesn't trust the way the media filters what he says and does. He understands the power of being able to communicate."