Republican presidential candidates sparred over the war in Iraq and poked fun at their missing counterpart at a debate at the University of New Hampshire last night.

The night started on the light note. The newest candidate, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, skipped the debate to announce his candidacy on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In the bargain, Thompson snagged a cushy couch seat, but opened himself up to a round of jokes from the other eight candidates, all of whom were on stage at UNH's Whittemore Center last night.

"Maybe we're up past his bedtime," joked Arizona Sen. John McCain. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee noted that Thompson shares a home state with country crooner George Jones, whose fans have dubbed him "no-show George." Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said he had a couple of questions for Thompson: "Why the hurry? Why not take some more time off?"

The Iraq war dominated the most heated exchanges of the night, with Romney - who is in the lead - seeming to take the brunt of two questions.

Strafford County Deputy Sheriff Mark Riss, whose son is serving in Iraq, asked Romney about comments he made in Iowa in which he appeared to liken his sons' work for his campaign to military service.

"I don't think you fully understand how offended my wife and I were, and probably the rest of the people who have sons, daughters, husbands and wives serving in the war on terror to compare your son's attempts to get you elected to my sons' service in Iraq," Riss said.

Romney emphasized his respect for the military. "Well, there is no comparison, of course," he said. "There's no question but that the honor that we have for men and women who serve in our armed forces is a place of honor we will never forget and nothing compares to it."

On the "surge" McCain challenged Romney for saying President Bush's troop surge "is apparently working."

"It is working. No, not 'apparently' it's working," McCain said. "It's working because we've got a great general. We've got a good strategy. Anbar province, things have improved."

Romney said he was waiting for Gen. David Petraeus to make his report to Congress this month. While violence has been tamped down by many accounts, Iraq has met only three out of 18 military and political benchmarks, according to a report this week from Congress's nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

At the center of some of the sharpest exchanges about Iraq was Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a one-time Libertarian presidential candidate who has opposed the war from the start and calls for immediate withdrawal.

At one point, Paul went one-on-one with Huckabee, both men drawing applause from the audience. Huckabee said his stance on Iraq is driven by a simple lesson he learned shopping with his mother as a boy: If you break something, you have to buy it.

"Well, what we did in Iraq, we essentially broke it," Huckabee said. "It's our responsibility to do the best we can to try to fix it before we just turn away."

Paul said that responsibility for war policy did not belong to Americans, but rather a small group of neoconservatives who "hijacked our foreign policy." He said Huckabee's position was about saving face.

"We've dug a hole for ourselves, and we've dug a hole for our party," Paul said. "We're losing elections, and we're going down next year if we don't change it, and it has all to do with foreign policy and we have to wake up to this fact."

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