By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Democratic-led Senate is moving closer to rewriting the measure that paved the way for U.S. President George W. Bush to invade Iraq nearly four years ago, two top Democratic lawmakers said on Sunday. The move would not repeal the Senate's 2002 vote authorizing the war, but instead limit the mission of U.S. troops to focus on counter-terrorism efforts such as protecting Iraq's borders, said Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It will not be combat in the middle of Baghdad. It will be a transition to a more limited mission of supporting the Baghdad army training and logistics," the Michigan Democrat told CBS's "Face the Nation." He added the measure, expected to come up this week, would be binding. Democrats, who took over both houses of Congress in January, have been searching for a way to express their displeasure with Bush's plan to increase U.S. troops in Iraq. They have largely rejected the idea of withholding funds for the war. An earlier bid to pass a nonbinding resolution rebuking the troop build-up stalled, but Levin and Sen. Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said this new effort is gaining greater support among nearly all Democrats. "We are coming to a very broad consensus, and that consensus ... is this: that we ought to change the mission," Schumer, vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "We want to change it, to have a much more narrow focus." The new measure is unlikely to win over many supporters of the war, most of whom have urged Congress to continue backing Bush's efforts. It is also unclear whether the U.S. House of Representatives would follow the Senate's lead. Connecticut Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who has staunchly supported the Iraq invasion, told CBS that the resolution made no sense. The former Democrat echoed concerns from Republican lawmakers who want to give Bush's plan time to work. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said every resolution against the U.S. effort in Iraq damaged its chance of success. "This is our last best chance ... it's not more of the same," he told NBC's "Meet the Press." Democrats are also considering attaching possible conditions to any measures that fund U.S. troops. They are considering requiring that rotations into Iraq be limited to a year and mandating that soldiers be adequately equipped and trained. Some also want to call for troops be out of Iraq in six months. "All of these Democratic resolutions, none of them think through what happens if we leave Iraq in 6 months or a year," Graham added. ONE REPUBLICAN ON BOARD Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado, told CNN's "Late Edition" he opposed the troop increase and believed the United States was about to wrap up its involvement in Iraq. "I think we are at the end game. I think that the increase in the number of troops that we've sent to Iraq is simply the beginning of the end game," he said. In contrast to other Republicans, Tancredo, a longshot presidential hopeful, also said the Iraq war was not helping in the fight against terror. "I'm telling you that we must begin the process of withdrawal from Iraq," he said. "It is not helping us in the all-out war, the bigger war against radical Islam."
