Over the last four months, the Iraq deliberations in Congress have
lurched from a purely symbolic resolution rebuking the president's
strategy to timetables for the withdrawal of American troops. Behind
the scenes, an elaborate political operation, organized by a coalition
of antiwar groups and fine-tuned to wrestle members of Congress into
place one by one, has helped nudge the debate forward.

But there are tensions in the relationship between the groups, which
banded together earlier this year under the umbrella of Americans
Against Escalation in Iraq, and the Democratic leadership. The
fissures could be magnified in coming weeks as the House speaker,
Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid
of Nevada, struggle to cobble together a strategy after President
Bush's veto of the $124 billion Iraq spending bill that tied the money
to a timetable for withdrawal.

On Thursday, leaders of the liberal group MoveOn.org, including Tom
Matzzie, the group's Washington director who also serves as the
campaign manager for the coalition, sent a harshly worded warning to
the Democratic leadership.

"In the past few days, we have seen what appear to be trial balloons
signaling a significant weakening of the Democratic position," the
letter read. "On this, we want to be perfectly clear: if Democrats
appear to capitulate to Bush - passing a bill without measures to end
the war - the unity Democrats have enjoyed and Democratic leadership
has so expertly built, will immediately disappear."

The letter went on to say that if Democrats passed a bill "without a
timeline and with all five months of funding," they would essentially
be endorsing a "war without end." MoveOn, it said, "will move to a
position of opposition."

"Our constituency is the people across this country who want to shut
this war down," Mr. Andrews said. "It's not the Democratic Party."