Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin have introduced a resolution calling for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by July 2007. Senators Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Jack Reed, D-R.I., are sponsoring a resolution that calls for the beginning of a withdrawal of troops but not deadline for them to be home.

The Levin amendment is an attempt to straddle a difficult line - to deliver to the Iraqi government an unmistakable warning that the U.S. mission is not open-ended while also sidestepping Republican charges that the Democrats want to "cut and run."

It would also add to the legitimacy of the Iraqi government by allowing it to determine, with U.S. military advice, the right pace for withdrawal.

The Kerry resolution is meant to drive the party to a firm stance on Iraq. Democrats - and Kerry particularly - have suffered politically for what has been successfully characterized by Republicans as talking out of both sides of their mouth on Iraq: voting for the resolution to give the president authority to go to war while at the same time criticizing the underlying intelligence and mission and how it has been handled.

"The Democrats allow the Republicans to put them on the defensive when it is they who should be on the defensive," said a Democratic staffer who supports the Kerry/Feingold language.

The two resolutions display an emotionally charged split in the two camps and within the party. Key Democratic senators - including but not limited to Kerry, Feingold, Levin, Reed, Biden, Feinstein and others - met "four or five" times last week to hammer out differences in the resolutions to offer a united Democratic front. The meetings were unsuccessful.

"The Democratic caucus has been entirely too cautious," said the staffer. "We're not going to triangulate on this by not standing for anything... The debate will end up where Kerry and Feingold are. The caucus is just getting there too slowly."

A major source of Republican power on Capitol Hill is its ability to rally its members to the same public stance; it is a rare Republican who breaks with the party on key issues. The Democrats enjoy no such unanimity.

With the balance of Congress hanging on the next election, many in the Senate are trying to drive the Democrats to a unified position, better to offer a cogent alternative to the G.O.P. Part of legislating is winning, said another Democrat.

The staffer rejected the notion of putting unanimity above the policy.

"It's more important that they stand for something," he said.

The Kerry/Feingold language is not "cutting and running", the source said: it would leave behind counter-terrorist forces like those who tracked slain Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi, as well as a force "over the horizon" - somewhere in the Middle East, ready to respond to a crisis in Iraq if necessary.

"This isn't 'July 1, see you later.' Four years after we went in to Iraq, even the generals are saying a large U.S. presence fuels support for the insurgency," the staffer said, pointing out that Iraqis have lived up to each of the deadlines imposed on them - to assume sovereignty, for three elections, for the writing of a constitution.

"We need to give them a deadline to stand up for themselves," the staffer said.

The source derided the Levin-Reed amendment: "It doesn't do anything. It's a non-binding resolution with no firm deadlines."

In fact both the Levin/Reed and the Kerry/Feingold resolution are fundamentally toothless. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress limited power to proscribe the powers of the president as commander in chief; whatever the strength of the language, the Senate acts in an advisory capacity only.

The only real influence Congress can exercise over the conduct of a war is in its funding. Neither the Kerry nor the Levin resolution fences funding for the war. Given the Bush administration's expansive interpretation of executive powers, it would be pure optimism to believe a Senate resolution would affect the White House's behavior.

The public split is manna for the Republicans as they approach the 2006 election with very low approval ratings for President Bush and the war. The House Majority Leader, Republican David Boehner, is reveling in press coverage of the divergent Democratic revolutions in his daily electronic newsletter, "Majority Matters."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D- Mass, said on the floor of the Senate Wednesday that the resolutions actually shore up the Democratic stance, even if they differ on the details. He announced he would be supporting both the Levin and Kerry amendments.

"Both make clear the Democrats are united in our belief that it is time for the Iraqis" to secure their own country, he said, and read from the Iraqi national security adviser's editorial published this week in the Washington Post.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie wrote that there is already an unofficial timetable for U.S. withdrawal that the Iraqi government has briefed to the governors of Iraq's 18 provinces.

"Iraq's ambition is to have full control of the country by the end of 2008. In practice this will mean a significant foreign troop reduction. We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year's end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007," he wrote.

"The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis, who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place.

"The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance because of what they call the 'coalition occupation.'...Moreover, the removal of foreign troops will legitimize Iraq's government in the eyes of its people."

The Iraqi withdrawal plan is just six months off the Kerry resolution, and in accordance with the philosophy underpinning the Levin resolution.

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