Advocates of troop surge about-face in Congress

For many in the Senate, they were for a surge of troops in Iraq before they were against it.

“We don’t have enough troops in Iraq,” Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said in 2005.

In 2004, he told NBC’s Tim Russert some things he believes “very deeply.”

“Number one, we cannot fail,” Mr. Kerry said. “I’ve said that many times. And if it requires more troops in order to create the stability that eliminates the chaos, that can provide the groundwork for other countries, that’s what we have to do.”

He no longer believes that now. He is among at least a dozen Democratic senators who in the past have called for more troops in Iraq but now support a resolution condemning President Bush’s plan to do just that. Many Republicans who voted for the war now plan to support a no-confidence resolution, including Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who in the past had warned that the war would be a long, tough slog and that Americans should “speak with one voice.”

The Senate will begin debating that resolution — or variations on it — this week, perhaps as early as today.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. has for years advocated increasing the number of troops on the ground in Iraq. But after Mr. Bush offered his proposal to do that earlier this month, the Delaware Democrat drafted a resolution rejecting the idea as not “in the national interest.”

In June 2005, he said, “There’s not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency.”

“They’re going to need a surge of forces,” he said in another interview.

By last week, Mr. Biden had reversed his war strategy.

“The president and others who support the surge have it exactly backwards,” he told reporters.

As late as last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was still open to the idea of a surge.

“If it is for a surge — that is, two or three months and it’s part of a program to get us out of there as indicated by this time next year — then sure I’ll go along with it,” said the Nevada Democrat who voted for the war in 2002. “If the commanders on the ground said this was just for a short period of time, we’ll go along with that.”

After Mr. Bush laid out his plan to increase troops, the Democratic leader flatly rejected it.

“The surge is a bad idea,” Mr. Reid said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

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