The debate over U.S. policy in Iraq between President Bush and Democratic nominee John F. Kerry took center stage in the presidential campaign last week as Kerry laid out his most specific plans to date. He argued for a change in direction just as the president appeared before the United Nations to herald Iraq's progress as a fledgling democracy.

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All week, the arrows flew as the Bush team argued that Kerry's agenda for Iraq was a carbon copy of what the president was already doing and the Kerry campaign countered that Bush's rosy view of Iraq's progress suggested the president was out of touch with reality.

But in spite of the rancor, the debate illuminated significant policy differences between the candidates, and the sparring provided a preview of the first presidential debate this Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla., which will focus on foreign policy.

Three years after Sept. 11, swing voters in Pennsylvania often say their faith in each candidate's ability to keep them safe will be the guiding issue when they go to the polls Nov. 2. Iraq is often cited as vital to their own security because the kidnappings and continuing attacks by insurgents are the most visible terrorist threat to American lives.

In that broader sense, Iraq will be the key issue for swing voters like Eugene and Nancy Mash of Jeannette, where both Bush and Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, campaigned this past week.

"You've got these beheadings on TV, American soldiers getting killed; nobody is safe over there," said Nancy Mash, shaking her head.

"Kerry's been a senator; he's been in politics. But can he handle this? Can he pick up someone else's problems?" she asked. "With Bush, we know what we have, like it or not.... But have we accomplished what we set out to do [in the war on terrorism]? -- I don't know."

"I see some good in what [Bush] has done and I see some not so good," said her husband, a Democrat who, like her, voted for Bush in 2000.

"On the Iraq thing, I think Kerry could do as well. ...And maybe we ought to give someone else a chance."

To make inroads with voters like the Mashes, Kerry last week began to portray the invasion of Iraq as a diversion from the war on terror that has actually made America less secure.

Kerry also tried to draw distinctions between how he and the president would deal with Iraq from here on out, focusing on four points: the extent to which he would persuade other countries to share the burdens in Iraq, the steps he would take to ensure fair elections this January, the level and speed of the training he would provide for Iraqi security forces, and the importance he would attach to winning the support of skeptical Iraqis by completing high-visibility reconstruction projects.

In this highly charged political atmosphere six weeks before the election, Kerry's policy proposals have been scorned by Republican-leaning analysts who say they offer nothing new and praised by Bush critics who characterize the administration's approach to date as unplanned and incoherent.

Still others argue that Kerry's goals are fine, but that achieving them is a far more thorny proposition than he acknowledges.

Withdrawing troops

The starkest difference between Bush and Kerry is when they would aim to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

Bush told the United Nations this past week that the United States would stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq "until their hopes of freedom and security are fulfilled." He has vowed to keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as they are needed and has criticized Kerry for setting a time limit that might embolden the enemies of democracy in Iraq.

Kerry said he would try to bring U.S. troops home within four years, with the withdrawal beginning next summer.

While some military leaders, including retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the Iraq invasion, have said it is realistic to see a "downward trend" in U.S. troop levels within three to five years, scholars such as Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute say what Kerry has proposed is irresponsible.

"To hold out there the prospect that you are going to bring troops home, when in fact you don't know what the circumstances are going to be -- and in essence say you're not going to finish the job -- is really the wrong message," said Pletka.

Kerry's spokesman for national security, Mark Kitchens, said in an interview that Kerry would withdraw troops only if the security situation in Iraq stabilized, authority could be effectively transferred to Iraq's security forces, and fair and free elections had been carried out.

Help from other nations

The plan that Kerry presented for Iraq at New York University last week rests to a large extent on the premise that he could do a better job than Bush in getting help from other nations because Bush alienated U.S. allies like France, Germany and Russia by deciding to invade Iraq without their support.

The Bush team scoffs at this assertion, noting that 29 countries already provide troops, including far-flung nations such as Tonga, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. These countries have more than 23,000 troops on the ground, supplementing the U.S. force of 140,000.

The death toll has been similarly lopsided, with 1,037 American troops killed so far and nearly 7,500 wounded. By comparison, about 66 British troops and 69 troops from all other nations have been killed during the same period, according to the Brookings Institution's "Iraq Index."

When he spoke of getting more nations involved, Kerry talked specifically of creating an international security force sufficient to protect U.N. workers needed to lay the groundwork for Iraq elections by Jan. 31.

The Bush administration has made such efforts, but no team has been announced. A State Department official said Friday that the administration was talking with Romania, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan to arrange a broader security force for U.N. workers and that Georgia had pledged 500 additional troops for that effort.But the degree to which Kerry would be able to persuade other nations to pledge more soldiers is unclear.

"I've spent a lot of my life dealing non-Americans, foreign leaders, and they are not going to give Bush much of anything, now or after the election," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "They just profoundly disagree with how he does things, so I think Kerry will get more from them, but not as much as he thinks."

Anthony H. Cordesman, a national security and military analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was skeptical that many nations would get involved even in an election worker protection force.

"We need to understand at this time that those troops and the U.N. people involved [in elections] are going to be seen as the enemy by all of the insurgents," Cordesman said.

But Kerry's team argues that under his leadership, other nations will have more of a stake in Iraq's future -- one clear difference, for example, is that Kerry has pledged to allow more countries to bid for contracts for billions of dollars of reconstruction work and oil field development.

The Bush administration initially limited contracts to those 63 nations (including the U.S. and Iraq) that participated or supported the U.S.-led invasion; though an exception was made for Canada.

Speeding payments

In presenting the two other central points of his plan -- that the training of the Iraqi security forces must be completed more quickly and that reconstruction projects need to be more visible to win the support of Iraqis -- Kerry has argued that the Bush administration has taken too long to dole out funds and that he would cut through government "red tape."

Of the $18.4 billion approved in aid for reconstruction, only some $1 billion has been spent. And earlier this month, the administration said it wanted to shift more than $3.5 billion now targeted at rebuilding projects to security.

Like Kerry, other members of Congress from both parties have expressed alarm about the level of equipment and training of Iraqi security forces, who are under fire from insurgents every day. About 75 percent of Iraqi armed forces have been trained, according to the Department of Defense's most recent status report, but that's true of only 49 percent of police officers on duty. Both forces have severe shortages in critical tools like police vehicles, radios and body armor.

Kerry argues that he would find ways to speed the delivery of those resources.

But Cordesman warned that speeding payments would require substantial changes to regulation and law, some of which are not at the president's discretion. Kerry has not proposed providing more money overall for rebuilding or security operations.