The Democratic-led congress plans to send Bush a bill tomorrow that gives $124bn for the Iraq war but requires a pullout to begin by October 1. The White House has said Bush would waste no time in vetoing it.

Harsh rhetoric has marked the debate, with senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada saying Bush had already lost the war and Republicans calling Reid a defeatist.

Two front-runners in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois senator Barack Obama and New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, spoke strongly against the war in speeches o­n Friday in South Carolina and California o­n Saturday. “The first thing I will do upon taking office is to end the war in Iraq,” Clinton said.

But behind the scenes, many from both sides expect an eventual compromise. o­ne compromise effort will focus o­n so-called benchmarks — goals for measuring Iraqi progress.

o­n Friday, Bush said again he “won’t accept” any bill with pullout dates. But he invited Democratic and Republican leaders to a White House meeting o­n Wednesday to discuss a second attempt at writing a war-funding bill. “I believe we can work a way forward,” he said.

While criticising Bush’s swagger, Reid also took a conciliatory tone in saying some of the president’s remarks had been “promising”. Reid said he had met senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and planned to do so again today.

White House budget director Rob Portman said he hoped that o­nce the showdown over the current Iraq bill had played out, “we’ll get a more serious discussion” o­n new legislation.

Senate armed services panel chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has discussed language in a second bill to measure the Iraqi government’s progress o­n goals like a law to share oil revenues fairly among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

McConnell and other congressional Republicans have signalled openness to benchmarks. A senior White House official said that was a “promising area” and praised Levin’s role.

Yet the White House and many Republicans dislike an approach favoured by some Democrats that would reduce aid to Iraq’s government if it fails to meet goals, saying that would harm its ability to get up o­n its feet.

o­n a separate track, Democratic representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a vocal war critic, has talked of a bill removing timetables but funding the war for just o­ne or two months. Portman said a short-term bill would o­nly “kick the can down the road” and would impede military planning.

Antiwar Democrats believe that over the next few months, Republican support for the war will erode further and, as more bills come up for debate, they will win more support for withdrawing troops.

In Iraq, US forces fired an artillery barrage in southern Baghdad yesterday morning. The death toll from a suicide car bomb attack o­n Saturday in Karbala rose to 68. The blasts came a day after the US said another nine American troops were killed.