Top Democratic presidential hopefuls traded their sharpest barbs yet of the White House race, as differences over Iraq burst into the open during their second televised debate.
In a string of snappy exchanges, senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and ex-vice presidential nominee John Edwards sparred over the initial US decision to launch a war which has now killed 3,488 US soldiers.
The three top candidates avoided the kind of gaffes which could threaten their campaigns, and long-shot candidates struggled for exposure in an event which cranked up the intensity of the marathon race.
Edwards provoked the sniping, early in the event on Sunday in New Hampshire, which hosts the first state primary election in January, accusing Clinton and Obama of not doing enough as lawmakers to bring troops home.
"It's the difference between leading and following," he said, referring to his demands for Congress to immediately use its power to cut war funding. "There is a difference between leadership and legislating."
Clinton and Obama last month voted against a new US$100 billion emergency war budget, under pressure from the very grassroots activists Edwards appeared to be courting with his debate tactics.
Obama scolded Edwards, who like Clinton was a member of the Senate in 2002 and voted to authorize US President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq, though he has since repudiated his vote.
On a day in which the US military reported another 14 US deaths in Iraq, Edwards later acknowledged Obama -- as a way of swiping at front-runner Clinton, who again declined to say her vote to authorize war was a mistake.
"He deserves credit for being against this war from the beginning. He was right. I was wrong," Edwards said.
Clinton, who has vowed to get troops home from Iraq if she is elected, trained fire back at Bush, and Republican candidates who will hold their own New Hampshire debate today.
"This is George Bush's war. He is responsible for this war, he started the war, he mismanaged the war, he escalated the war and he refuses to end the war," Clinton said, trying to minimize differences with her rivals on Iraq.
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