Liberal Magazine Takes the Democrats to Task Over Iraq

(Fox News) - Just as Democratic congressional leaders are confronting President Bush on Iraq as never before, a top editor at the liberal New Republic magazine says they are illiterate on the issue.

Senior editor Lawrence Kaplan cites an article by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman — and presidential candidate — Joe Biden — where the senator asserted that U.S. and Iraqi troops pacified the city of Tal Afar — then left. Kaplan reports that not only have the troops not left the city, their numbers have recently increased.

Also cited was Congressman John Murtha's suggestion that it would be easy for American forces to redeploy from Iraq to Okinawa — which is 5,000 miles away.

And House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes's ignorance of whether Sunni or Shia populate the ranks of Al Qaeda.

Kaplan also mentions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants a "new strategy" limiting U.S. forces to the training of Iraqis and counter-terror operations so as to reduce the "combat footprint" — the very strategy in fact tried and discarded under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.