Rhode Island’s Sen. Jack Reed addresses the Democratic National Convention last night. Sacramento Bee / Brian Baer

DENVER — Blasting Sen. John McCain as “cheerleader in chief” for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Sen. Jack Reed helped to lead the charge last night on the Republican presidential candidate’s home ground of long experience in defense and foreign affairs.

Addressing the Democratic National Convention “as someone who had the privilege of commanding paratroopers,” the West Point graduate declared: “For eight years, John McCain has fallen in line with every one of George Bush’s national security decisions, and now he offers up four more years of the same failed policies.”

The Rhode Island Democrat’s speech was part of a concerted partisan effort to tie McCain — a Vietnam War hero who scores well in polls as a prospective commander in chief — to President Bush’s unpopular war policy.

With Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the party’s vice presidential nominee, and former President Bill Clinton headlining, the third night of prime-time Democratic programming was heavily devoted to polishing Obama’s credentials as a prospective wartime president and chip away at McCain’s — without deprecating his record as a Navy aviator who endured torture and years of confinement in North Vietnam. The speeches by leading Democrats were interspersed with stage and video presentations with veterans who recounted painful war experiences and laid some of the blame at McCain’s door.

“These times require more than a good soldier — they require a wise leader,” said Biden, a veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has traveled to Iraq with Reed. “Our country is less secure and more isolated than at any time in recent history. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has dug us into a very deep hole, with very few friends to help us climb out, declared Biden. “Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he says there can be no timelines to drawdown our troops from Iraq — that we must stay indefinitely?” Biden asked. “Or should we listen to Barack Obama, who says shift responsibility to the Iraqis — and set a time to bring our combat troops home?”

In a well-received speech, Clinton sought to soften voter concern that Obama lacks the background to command the armed forces and navigate the shoals of global affairs. Republicans said 16 years ago that Clinton was “too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief,” he reminded the crowd. “Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won’t work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history,” Clinton said to cheers.

But Clinton, mindful of the voters’ high regard for McCain’s war record, was careful to pay him respect, calling him “a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam. He loves our country every bit as much as we do.”

It was McCain’s policy judgment in the Senate that the Democrats sought to tarnish. They also sought to charge McCain with the kind of deceptions that so many opponents of the war believe that Mr. Bush employed — deliberate exaggeration of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

The attack on McCain was also aimed at shifting the national security debate from the aspect of Iraq policy that McCain wants to emphasize to voters — his strong support of Mr. Bush’s 2007 “surge” of new combat troops.

Obama joined Reed and other Senate colleagues in seeking to block that shift in Iraq strategy before it was fully implemented last year. Since then, Obama, Reed and other Democrats have gradually come to acknowledge dramatic improvements in the security situation in Iraq, but they are loath to credit Mr. Bush or McCain, preferring to speak — as Reed did last night — of “the courage of our soldiers.”

In an interview before last night’s speech, Reed said, “Senator McCain seems to style the war in Iraq as beginning with the surge and ending with the surge. In reality, the war began with his vote in 2002,” Reed said. That was a reference to the congressional resolution that authorized Mr. Bush to use force against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. McCain and a large bipartisan Senate majority, including New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama’s running mate, Biden, voted for the resolution. Reed opposed the resolution. Obama, who was an Illinois state legislator at the time, spoke against invading Iraq.

“Barack Obama has proven he has the judgment to deliver the change we need” on foreign policy, Reed said in is speech. He stressed Obama’s plan to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the summer of 2010. Like an array of last night’s speakers — from Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Biden — Reed also cited Obama’s stress on “on finishing the fight” against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Reed reiterated Obama’s plan to “work with our military commanders” to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq. Without specifying how many troops will remain or for how long, Reed said Obama “will only keep troops in Iraq to target al-Qaida, protect our forces, and train Iraqi troops.”

With the levels of violence in Iraq sharply reduced, those goals are not far from the plans enunciated in recent weeks by Iraqi leaders — and accepted, in large part, by the Bush administration.

With the military and political situation in Iraq changing so rapidly, the differences between the proposals of Obama and McCain have blurred somewhat. Reed and his partisans attempted to sharpen those distinctions last night.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden have laid out a strategic vision to end the war in Iraq and strengthen our nation at home,” Reed concluded. “They will use every tool in our diplomatic, economic and military power to meet these goals.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com