Bill Richardson wants you to know that, unlike most of his rivals in the Democratic presidential primary, he is committed to pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq within his first term - and he's even promised to do it in the first six months.

At a debate at Dartmouth College last month, poll-topping candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards said they could not promise to have troops out in their first term, saying they hoped to do so but needed to leave flexibility for the situation on the ground.

Richardson seized on that. "Their position basically is changing the mission," he said at the debate. "My position in bringing all troops out of Iraq is to end the war."

Some experts are skeptical of the feasibility of the pledge.

"All the analyses that I've seen suggest that, unless you were to have a pell-mell withdrawal from Iraq, you can't really do that in less than a year or so," said Bill Martel, an associate professor of international security studies at Tufts's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. "And some people think it would take longer than that."

But Richardson's camp points to his resume - the New Mexico governor is a former diplomat who once served as U.N. ambassador - and has marshaled experts of its own who say that six months is possible and Richardson can achieve a withdrawal of all troops.

Richardson's campaign has focused full-bore on Iraq over the past two weeks. He's has run web ads and a handful of television ads on WMUR featuring liberal bloggers extolling Richardson's position on Iraq. They've filled New Hampshire in-boxes with e-mail headlines like: "War until 2013? Are they kidding?"

The message has received some traction among liberals in New Hampshire, some of whom worry that the general election debate will be muddied without a Democrat promising a full troop pullout.

"I think what people are trying to figure out is, how are you going to take on a Republican when you sound like a Republican on Iraq?" said talk-show host Arnie Arnesen.

Richardson's message has also earned several positive comments on the liberal blog bluehampshire.com. In a recent post, one of the site's founders, Mike Caulfield, cited the Iraq exchange at the debate as a potential defining moment of the Democratic race, arguing that the race's leaders were letting down their donors.

"Hillary, are your sponsors putting up that $27 million to be out of Iraq, 'maybe'? Obama, is that $20 million to get us out of Iraq, 'depending'?" wrote Caulfield, of Keene. "It's beyond belief."

Caulfield said that while he likes the "clarity" Richardson has brought to the Democratic debate, he's not likely to vote for him. Caulfield likes Sen. Chris Dodd and said he had concerns about Richardson's consistency on issues. But Richardson isn't completely out of the running, he said.

"If the choice ends up being between Richardson and the three front-runners, I certainly would look back to this whole incident," Caulfield said in an interview yesterday.

Yesterday, Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds de-emphasized the six month promise, focusing instead on the totality of the withdrawal his candidate backs.

"The timeline is less important than the end goal and the end result of withdrawing all troops from Iraq and leaving no forces behind," he said. "You cannot truly end the war and leave residual troops behind."

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