They are the two words that more and more Americans want to hear.

Yet they are two words that will not pass the lips of the two men who want the support of those Americans in November.

Exit strategy.

A nation increasingly bitter over American deaths in Iraq, anxious about the future, openly questioning what its troops are doing there and demoralized over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is now asking: "When are we getting out?"

One poll published in Washington last week indicated that more than four in 10 Americans are ready to cut-and-run.

Another poll found that more than half of those who call themselves Democrats feel it's time to pack up, come home and say, "Enough is enough."

In the midst of an election campaign, the heat on candidates to set a withdrawal deadline is intensifying.

There is speculation that President George W. Bush could announce such a deadline in one of a series of speeches he will give outlining the future of Iraq between now and the planned June 30 handover to an interim government there.

The same heat is on his presumed Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who faces a restive party core that wants a sign that its candidate will not follow a losing course if elected this fall.

Until now, the mystery Bush exit date is cloaked in a panoply of buzz phrases:

Not a day longer than necessary, not until the job is done, not until a free and secure Iraq has been established.

Kerry had to face the question head-on Friday during a town-hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisc.

"What do you plan to do to bring our troops home?" a woman in the audience demanded of the candidate.

"I'm going to get our troops home as fast as possible with honour and the job accomplished in the way it needs to be," Kerry responded.

If you listen hard, however, you can hear, if not an exit strategy, an exit consciousness that permeates all U.S. pronouncements these days.

Under the Bush plan — a series of signposts he hopes to meet in the weeks ahead — U.S. troops could remain in Iraq for 18 months or longer.

According to an idea bounced around the United Nations Security Council by China, that date should be sliced by one-third and January, 2005, should be the end of the line.

Win Without War, a coalition of 42 liberal American organizations, agrees: January is the latest return date.

Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman from Maine, heads Win Without War and has already flexed its muscles with his "virtual march on Washington," an action taken last February, when Senate and White House offices received more than a million phone calls and faxes calling for U.S. troops to be repatriated.

"The reality is this country has lost the trust of the Iraqi people," says Andrews.

"We are an unwelcome occupation force. Whenever that situation is created, insurgents can be successful because they, not us, will win the hearts and minds of the population.

"Iraqis want us out and they want us out now. We need to respect those wishes."

According to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, those wishes will be respected — if they are relayed through the interim government to be established by June 30.

"It's made clear in the (proposed U.N.) resolution that those forces are there at the consent of the government of the people of Iraq," Powell said Friday, repeating a previous mantra that is echoed by the foreign ministers of all countries with troops in Iraq.

"If consent is withdrawn, then consent is withdrawn, and the coalition forces would depart."

In another sign of an expedited transition that could lead to an earlier withdrawal, White House sources let it be known last week that the first Iraqi elections could be moved from January to a date closer to that of the Nov. 2 U.S. election.

The president seemed to set the stage for that last week in a speech before the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., when he said elections would be held "no later than January."

In his Friday briefing with foreign reporters, Powell referred to elections "by the end of the year" or January at the latest.

Pushed by French President Jacques Chirac and other European leaders, Bush has had to publicly assure the world that the interim government in Iraq will have "full sovereignty"— although the White House has never fully explained how sovereignty can be full if military decisions remain with U.S. commanders still on the ground.

Powell is not shy about repeating his belief that U.S. troops should stay only if invited, although he has said he is not losing any sleep about being asked to leave.

Bush is more reticent, perhaps mindful that if the offer is made often enough, the interim government might actually take him up on it — acting on polls that show some 80 per cent of Iraqis surveyed want the Americans gone.

Bush appeared in the White House Rose Garden Friday with Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen and explained the June 30 handover this way:

"I told the prime minister that our government and our coalition will transfer full sovereignty, complete and full sovereignty, to an Iraqi government that will be picked by Mr. (Lakhdar) Brahimi of the United Nations.

"He said, `Do you mean full sovereignty?' I said, `I mean full sovereignty.'"

And while Rasmussen assured him that Danish troops would stay in Iraq to "finish the job," he put a proviso on the continued presence of the 500 Danes, saying: "From June 30, international military presence in Iraq will be provided, at request, from this new Iraqi government. Our troops will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government decides."

Pressure to come up with an exit strategy is perhaps toughest on Bush's chief ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A recently published poll showed 46 per cent of respondents want Blair to quit before the next British election, his coziness with Bush the biggest factor in his unpopularity.

Nevertheless, Blair dispatched another 300 troops to Iraq last week and his envoy to Iraq, David Richmond, says fully trained Iraqi security forces, a precondition for troop withdrawal, could not be put in place by January.

U.S. Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz — one of the war's strongest supporters — laid out the 18-month strategy in recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointing to the end of 2005 as the date by which Iraqi security forces would be "fully trained, equipped and organized" and a representative Iraqi government would be in place.

Still, Wolfowitz would not allow himself to be pinned down to such a timetable.

James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defence Policy Center at the Rand Corp., and Philip Gordon of the left-leaning Brookings Institution wrote in Friday's Washington Post that leaving Iraq under pressure from terrorist attacks "would be viewed as a strategic defeat of historic proportions for the United States.

"The message sent around the world would be that enough roadside bombs, suicide attacks and beheadings of civilians can succeed in forcing the United States (and by extension, any government) to abandon its goals."

Yet, they wrote, unless Bush can shift U.S. priorities in Iraq to the security of the population, "early withdrawal may be the only alternative, with all the consequences that could ensue."

Those consequences usually include abandoning Iraq as a lost state, imminent civil war, strife throughout the greater Middle East and a new lease on life for global terrorism.

Bush has warned that an early departure without victory would be a catastrophe.

Kerry is on the same page, saying such a development would put America at war with much of the Muslim world.

Michael O'Hanlon, Gordon's Brookings colleague, says the Bush administration must announce that the mission will be over by the end of 2005.

If an end to the mission is announced and made clear, O'Hanlon wrote in an article with fellow analyst James Steinberg, it could actually make a continued presence more palatable to the Iraqis.

"Unless we restore the Iraqi people's confidence in our role, failure is not only an option but a likelihood," they wrote.

"Critical to achieving our goal is an announced decision to end the current military deployment by the end of next year, following the Iraqi adoption of a constitution, together with greatly intensified training for the Iraqi security forces.

"Otherwise, the issue may well be not how long we want to stay but how soon the Iraqis kick us out."

But Nile Gardiner, an analyst with the right-wing Heritage Foundation, told CNN Friday that an artificial deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops would send the wrong message.

"It would only strengthen the hand of international terrorist organizations operating in the country," he said, "it would undermine long-term confidence in the future of Iraq and would also deter long-term foreign investment, which is badly needed at this time."

To the dismay of many Democrats, those advising Kerry on foreign policy are offering the same counsel.

"Bringing troops home now would be a step in the wrong direction," says William Perry, a former defence secretary in the Bill Clinton administration and now a Kerry adviser.

"We need to augment those troops and that's why we have to bring NATO in.

"We need to take every reasonable step we can to ensure success in this mission."

Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Clinton and another Kerry adviser, thinks deadlines sometimes create more problems than they solve.

"What needs to happen is to have certain activities, benchmarks, and the turning over of Iraq to the Iraqi people," she says.

"That is what is essential here."

With so little daylight between the Iraq positions of Bush and Kerry, the cautious style of the presumptive nominee stands in sharp contrast to the more vocal wing of the party, led by Delaware Senator Joe Biden (also a Kerry adviser), Senator Ted Kennedy (a key player in Kerry's sweep of the primaries) and, most recently, former vice-president Al Gore.

Gore, in a speech last week sponsored by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org, tossed out more rhetorical red meat to the converted in 45 minutes than Kerry has dished up since last winter.

Gore called for the firing of Bush and virtually his entire inner circle and called the incumbent the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon.

He took particular aim at the prison-abuse scandal, calling it the "natural consequence of the Bush administration policy which has dismantled constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

"The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of Sept. 11."

Gore said the White House set the tone for the suspected murder of prisoners at the hands of U.S. guards and has no right to blame such behaviour on a bunch of hapless army reservists.

"How dare the incompetent and wilful members of the Bush-Cheney administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people!" he said to applause.

"How dare they subject us to such dishonour and disgrace!

"How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!"

Out of deference to Kerry, Gore did not call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, but his words sounded like those of a man who would: independent candidate Ralph Nader.

Democrats, alternately angry with Nader for costing them the 2000 campaign and wary that he could do the same this year, are closely monitoring the support he receives for his call to bring American troops home by the end of this year.

Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Nader said two choices face the country.

Iraq could continue on its current course and become a "puppet regime" under U.S. control, he said, or "we could declare a set date for corporate and military withdrawal — let's say the end of the year."

Many political analysts put faith in the common sense of American voters, suggesting they will realize a vote for Nader would be, in Kerry's words, "a vote for George Bush."

But Nader also could spell peril for Kerry in a number of swing states where the Democrat will need every vote in order to beat Bush.

Kerry has already faced one threat from an anti-war candidate: Howard Dean briefly eclipsed him during the primary season, when voters warmed to the anti-war message of the former Vermont governor.

Nader's position on troop withdrawal could ultimately prove that, while the two major candidates will not speak of an exit strategy, they are fast losing the luxury of ignoring the question.

Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

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