Iowa and New Hampshire are still a few months down the road, but the candidates for president are about to face off in an even earlier competition -- the Petraeus primary.

The congressional deliberations over the report on the Iraq war due tomorrow from America's ground commander, Gen. David Petraeus, will intensify the focus on the debate on the war among White House hopefuls in a year in which it consistently polls as the top issue on voters' minds.

Democratic and Republican candidates characterize the issue very differently.

The Democrats all call the war a profound mistake that has distracted the nation from the battle against terrorism. The leading Republicans candidates support the decision to go to war and, with some exceptions, they portray the conflict as central to a broader effort against terrorism.

Because of their support -- in varying degrees -- for Mr. Bush's policy, most of the GOP hopefuls have not had to offer alternatives to it, nor have they had to offer policies for the future that don't assume a successful conclusion to the Iraq enterprise

As unanimous critics of the war policy, the leading Democrats do outline alternatives, but the similarities in their "get-the-troops-out'' rhetoric mask both the differences among them and, in some case, the areas of convergence with the apparent short-term direction of the administration.

The Democratic contenders tend to be very specific on troop withdrawal plans. They are less detailed on post-occupation policies, tending to offer general calls for intensified diplomacy and multi-nation efforts to bring about a stable Iraq

Anticipating the fallout from the Petraeus testimony, Kenneth Schultz, a Stanford University political scientist and expert on how domestic politics shapes foreign policy, said, "It's hard to imagine that there's going to be a new dynamic. The Republican candidates, responding to a base still supportive of the war, are going to pull out any suggestion of success; the Democrats are going to harp on the negative aspects. ... It's going to be an opportunity for everybody to say they were right all along.''

The administration is expected to follow the progress report with a call for at least some reduction in the current troop levels, although one far short of the near complete withdrawal sought by the Democrats. Mr. Schultz noted that the administration can be expected to argue that some troops can come home because the surge has succeeded, while many Democrats will counter that nearly all troops should come home because it has failed.

The Republicans

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is a vocal advocate of the view that the war is part of a larger war on Islamic terrorism. Frequently invoking his experience in coping with the devastation of the 9/11 attacks, he claims that Democratic candidates do not understand the lessons of the attack and the need to project strength in a dangerous world.

Sen. John McCain is a full-throated advocate of the surge strategy even as he reminds audiences that he was a critic of the tactics pushed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- "the worst secretary of defense in history." At the same time, he has denounced the political paralysis of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. On the campaign trail, he has said that U.S. patience with the lack of political progress can't be open-ended but that it would be a mistake to state a timetable for either political or military results.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, similarly supports the surge and opposes timetables.

"This country has never declared war until 'a week from Wednesday' and we have always declared war until victory,'' his Web site states. In the GOP debate this past week in New Hampshire, however, he offered a defense of the administration's current tactics that was less than a robust endorsement of the president's original war strategy.

"We have to be one nation,'' he said, countering fellow candidate Rep. Ron Paul's call for an immediate end to the war. "That means, if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country. Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor....

"We have to continue the surge. What we did in Iraq is we essentially broke it. It's our responsibility to try and fix it.''

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governorn, has also maintained a supportive wait-and-see attitude toward the surge. In the debate Wednesday, he said he was optimistic that the surge would be sufficiently successful to warrant a draw-down of troops through next year.

He has called for efforts to involve Iraq's neighbors in stabilizing the region while warning against proposals to divide Iraq into ethnic regions. In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine this summer, he offered an overall analysis the risks to the U.S. that was strikingly similar to the "Gathering Storm,'' speech that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum repeated through the closing weeks of his unsuccessful 2006 Senate reelection campaign.

"Radical Islam has one goal: to replace all modern Islamic states with a worldwide caliphate while destroying the United States and converting all non-believers, forcibly, if necessary, to Islam," Mr. Romney wrote.

Rep. Duncan Hunter of California supports the war overall as well as the surge. Like him, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado supported the original decision to go to war. Neither, however, supported the surge. Mr. Brownback has called for diplomatic efforts to settle the conflict while Mr. Tancredo, going somewhat further, has advocated troop withdrawals starting in November.

Mr. Paul, the most passionate opponent of the war among the GOP candidates, unsuccessfully proposed legislation that would have removed all troops from Iraq by the spring of this year.

Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator who is the newest member of the candidate cast, has yet to offer any detailed proposals for Iraq, but in a speech last month to the Veteran of Foreign Wars, he endorsed the analysis that Iraq is one part of a larger war.

"Success in Iraq will not solve our problem, but defeat will make it much worse,'' he said.

The Democrats

On the Democratic campaign trail, much of the disagreement on the war has focused on the deliberations before the invasion. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois criticizes the other leading candidates for voting to authorize the war. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards calls his vote on the war resolution a mistake. New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that, knowing what she does now, she would not have voted for the resolution but she has resisted calls from liberal critics to apologize for her vote.

The war voting records of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and the two other Democratic senators in the race, Sens. Chris Dodd, of Connecticut, and Joe Biden, of Delaware, will be in the spotlight in the maneuvering after Gen. Petraeus' testimony as Senate Democrats try to craft withdrawal legislation that would attract enough Republican votes to withstand a filibuster.

Amid reports that the Senate's Democratic leadership was considering a tactical retreat from earlier attempts to impose a firm timetable for withdrawal, Mr. Dodd and Mr. Edwards released statements insisting that Congress fight to impose a deadline on the U.S. combat role.

Mr. Biden, the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has proposed a Bosnia-like partition plan for Iraq, with a central federal government presiding over regional governments for the Kurdish north, Sunni west and Shiite southern regions of Iraq. The plan would make Baghdad a federal city with an international peace-keeping force.

Mr. Biden, who was in Iraq at the end of last week, supported the original war authorization and was the only Democratic candidate to support a May 2007 war funding measure, but he is a strong advocate of a termination of the U.S. troops presence.

His plan calls for the withdrawal of all but about 20,000 troops by the summer of 2008. While he says he opposes permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, he says he would maintain this "small residual force ... to strike any concentration of terrorists, help keep Iraq's neighbors honest and train its security forces.''

Mrs. Clinton has proposed a congressional vote to deauthorize the war effective next month, the fifth anniversary of the original authorization measure's passage, although there appears to be little prospect that it will be taken up. Like Mr. Biden, she envisions a role for a much reduced residual troop presence during a transition period after a U.S. withdrawal, but she does not support a permanent U.S. base in Iraq.

In a speech last month in New Hampshire, she argued that "principled compromise,'' was sometimes necessary to bring real change in Washington. Her position on the evolving Senate war debate will be a balancing act for her. Ardent anti-war constituencies of the primary states will continue to argue for a strict withdrawal timetable while the Senate leadership's considers how much flexibility would be needed to win enough GOP votes for a measure curbing deployments.

She said she would form "a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all of the states bordering Iraq.''

This group, she said, "will first work to convince Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Syria to refrain from getting involved in the civil war. ... None of these countries benefits if Iraq implodes and the resulting chaos spills over their borders.

"Although I believe our military disengagement will reduce the likelihood of regional interference in Iraq's internal affairs over the long run, I acknowledge that in the short run, there may well be increased violence and instability following our troop withdrawals.''

Mr. Dodd, another former supporter of the war, is now one of the more adamant proponents of speedy withdrawal. In a statement that was a thinly veiled shot at Mrs. Clinton, he was quick to condemn reports that the Democratic leadership might yield on a strict timetable.

"Now is the time for Democrats to stand our ground, stick to our principles and fight for an end to this war,'' he said. "I know when to make a principled compromise and this ain't one of those times.''

After the redeployment of most combat troops, Mr. Dodd would permit a much smaller, though unspecified level of forces for "three narrowly targeted exceptions -- the protection of U.S. personnel and infrastructure, specific counterterrorism operations, and assistance with the training and equipping of Iraqi forces.''

Mr. Edwards was among the first Democrats to recant his vote on the war resolution. He now calls for the immediate withdrawal of between 40,000 and 50,000 troops with the balance being redeployed within eight to ten months. Like Mr. Dodd, he is adamant that any legislation in the wake of the administration's pending progress report should include strict deadlines

He calls for direct, immediate negotiations with Iran and other countries in the region to help deter post-occupation chaos and has called a partition plan a possible element in a post-war solution.

"Iran clearly has an interest in a stable Iraq," he said, noting that Tehran has no interest in a refugee flood over its borders. He argued that Iran, as a predominantly Shiite state, has a particular interest in making sure that post-deployment tensions do not burgeon into a wider regional conflict in a part of the world where, in contrast to Iraq itself, Sunnis are the majority.

"If this conflict began to spill outside the borders of Iraq, the Iranians are in a dangerous place,'' he said.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly pointed to the fact that he was the only early opponent of the war authorization among the first-tier Democratic candidates. He introduced a bill early this year that would have forced redeployment to begin by the spring with an end to most combat troop presence by April, 2008. He too, however, has said that there may be a need a residual presence for training and anti-terrorism missions.

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last month, Mr. Obama called the surge "a complete failure." In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine this summer, he described the current unrest as a civil war and said, "The best chance we have to leave Iraq a better place is to pressure these warring parties to find a lasting political solution. And the only effective way to apply this pressure is to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces.''

As a sequel to that action, Mr. Obama echoes the general Democratic call for an intensified diplomatic effort in the region.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has called for a withdrawal of troops within six to eight months. He differs form his fellow Democrats in that he would not allow any residual force within the country at all.

"Most Iraqis, and most others in the region, believe that we are there for their oil, and this perception is exploited by al-Qaida, other insurgents, and anti-American Shia groups," he writes in his seven-point plan for ending the war. "By announcing that we intend to remove ALL troops, we would deprive them of this propaganda tool.''

Rep. Denis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel, the other Democratic candidates, were both opponents of the war from the beginning and are withdrawal absolutists, calling for an end to the American corporate as well as military presence in Iraq.