IMPEACH BUSH

Goffstown, N.H -- Ever since Senate Majority leader Harry Reid provoked a firestorm last April by declaring "the war is lost" -- without attributing defeat to President Bush -- Democrats have scrambled to pin the Iraq fiasco on the Republican Party.

Leading Democratic presidential candidates have had trouble, however, keeping the strategically critical issue of blame in focus. In the debate Sunday night at St. Anselm College here, neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards directly targeted Bush on his culpability for the war.

The two candidates running furthest to the left, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, actually accused their Democratic competitors for the nomination of being fully complicit in the military debacle.

"It was facilitated by the Democrats. They brought the resolution up," Gravel declared. "Sure, it's George Bush's war, but it's the Democrats' war also."

Kucinich, too, blamed his Democratic colleagues, singling out Hillary Clinton. When it was his turn to answer a question about the war, Kucinich said:

"This is where Senator Clinton says 'well this is George Bush's war.' Oh No. There's a teachable moment here, and a teachable moment is that this war belongs to the Democratic Party because the Democrats were put in charge by the people in the last election with the thought that they were going to end the war. Well, they haven't."

Gravel and Kucinich are both running as much against the Democratic Party as against the GOP.

Senator Chris Dodd avoided placing blame by saying only "this policy in Iraq has failed."

While Senator Hillary Clinton proved tactically adept in the early part of the debate -- "This is George Bush's war" -- she appeared to hit a shoal as the debate wore on, blaming the Iraqi people rather than Bush and his national security team:

"Our troops did the job they were asked to do... It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity."

Alone among the candidates, Senator Joe Biden consistently placed blame for the war on the GOP: "The Republicans and this president have not told us the truth about this war from the beginning.... Let me tell you straight up . . . the truth of the matter is, the only one that's emboldened the enemy has been George Bush by his policies."

Although he is not running for President, Illinois Representative Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, may have come up with the most winning formulation for his party:

"The Army won the war. George Bush lost the peace."

But judging from the debate on Sunday, Emanuel has had little success encouraging other Democrats to adopt his talking points.