WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Democrats in search of an Iraq exit strategy will float another proposal this week in hopes of appeasing their anti-war base while avoiding the catastrophe many warn will result from a hasty retreat.

In the Senate, Democrats are drafting legislation to revoke Congress’ 2002 vote authorizing the war. That effort is headed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden of Delaware.

Levin always has opposed the war, but Biden was among the 29 Democrats who in 2002 voted to go to war.

Another proposal, supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, would pull troops out by March of next year and restrict U.S. troops to fighting al-Qaida terrorists, training Iraqi forces and maintaining Iraq’s border.

Over in the House, Rep. John Murtha wants to begin choking off money for the war by heavily restricting the funding for it. The Pennsylvania Democrat chairs the powerful Defense Appropriations subcommittee that controls military spending.

The new proposals come after Democrats failed to get final approval of a nonbinding resolution to condemn President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 reinforcement troops to Iraq. That resolution, which was viewed as treasonous by the right and too weak by the left, passed the House but could not overcome a Republican-led filibuster in the Senate.

‘’This is not a surge so much as it is a plunge into Baghdad and into the middle of a civil war,’’ Levin said Sunday of the Bush troop plan.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said all the various proposals indicate that Democrats are in search of a “Goldilocks” resolution.

They want something “that is hot enough to appease the radical left wing but cool enough for party leaders to claim they support the troops,” he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed the Democratic tactics as “the worst of micromanagement of military affairs.”

Withdrawing from Iraq before a stable government takes control, she and other Republicans argue, would guarantee complete failure in the Middle East.

churt@dcexaminer.com