Hopefuls preening for the cameras

Sen. Barack Obama unleashed a litany of criticisms of the Iraq war at a hearing yesterday but barely got a question in when his turn came to interrogate Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker.

“This continues to be a disastrous foreign-policy mistake,” said Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat, who, along with the chamber’s other presidential hopefuls, had an opportunity for posturing during hearings on the war.

The performance by Mr. Obama, who as his time was expiring resorted to asking a question posed earlier by other senators on the panel, contrasted with that of his chief Democratic rival for the presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Mrs. Clinton concisely recounted “grim realities” of the sustained violence in Iraq and then asked Gen. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq, to clarify what she called his contradictory statements to the panel about whether he would recommend a pullout of troops if the situation in Iraq does not improve next year.

“General, don’t you think the American people deserve a very specific answer about what is expected from our country in the face of the failure of the Iraqi government to pursue its own required political agenda?” she said.

The general said he had not contradicted himself and that he would be “very hard-pressed” to recommend continued troop presence under those conditions.

Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona also weighed in at the hearings.

Gen. Petraeus and Mr. Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, spent more than nine hours before two Senate committees delivering a war assessment that included recommendations to withdraw 30,000 U.S. troops by spring and leave 130,000 troops to continue the mission in Iraq.

The general and the ambassador made a similar presentation Monday to House committees.

Mr. McCain, a staunch supporter of the war effort who is struggling to regain momentum for his presidential bid, commended the troop-surge plan ordered by President Bush.

“We must, as Gen. Petraeus intends, keep this strategy in place,” said Mr. McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, one of two Senate panels to hear the war report.

Mr. Obama took time to criticize Mr. Bush and the decision to go to war, a decision he opposed from the start but which Mrs. Clinton voted for in 2002.

“This is not to relitigate the original decision to go into Iraq,” said Mr. Obama, who was not in the Senate when the Iraq vote was taken in 2002. “It is to suggest that if the American people and the Congress had understood [the consequences], I think most people would have said, ‘That’s a bad deal.’ ”

As his time ran out, Mr. Obama asked what scenario would prompt Mr. Crocker to recommend a pullout, a repeat of a question by Sen. John E. Sununu, New Hampshire Republican.

“Senator, I described for Senator Sununu a little bit ago some of the things that I think are going to be very important as we move ahead,” Mr. Crocker said.

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