Representative Les Aspin of Wisconsin, a moderately hawkish Democrat who heads the House Armed Services Committee, also warned that the American public was uneasy.

"I think that what's clearly being implied in the study group's report is what some of us have been saying for a while," said Senator Jack Reed, a hawkish Democrat from Rhode Island with a military record, which has made him a spokesman for the party on Iraq.

Mr. From, a longtime Clinton ally, dismissed the notion that Mr. Lieberman was a bellwether for hawkish Democrats.

Representative John P. Murtha, the hawkish Democrat who spent his political career as a staunch Pentagon supporter, came home Monday as something entirely different: an antiwar symbol.

He will also be seen as a counter-balance to Senator Joe Lieberman, a hawkish former Democrat who became an Independent and now supports Mr McCain.

Fought for Military Bases Mr. Stratton, a hawkish Democrat who chaired the House Subcommittee on Procurement and Military Nuclear Systems has by sheer dint of his seniority been one of the state's most influential Representatives.

"We didn't trust the old man," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, recounted in explaining why even some hawkish Democrats, including former Senators Sam Nunn of Georgia , voted against the first President Bush in 1991.

Mr. Israel describes himself as "one of the most hawkish Democrats in the House of Representatives."

While her predecessor and mentor Peter Deutsch was "among the most hawkish congressional Democrats on Middle East issues", Wasserman Schultz, who took over his seat for Florida's 20th district, "a heavily Jewish swath of Broward County", has taken a more centrist approach.