Edward Kennedy reinforces the doves

The veteran Democratic senator Edward Kennedy joined a chorus of US politicians beginning to attack President Bush's approach to Iraq yesterday, flatly rejecting the suggestion that opposition to war in Iraq was unpatriotic.

In the past week the president's political opponents have finally found their voice on the issue, including Dick Gephardt, a potential presidential candidate in 2004.

The former vice-president Al Gore became the potential leader of the doves and Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, forced Mr Bush to tone down his rhetoric by denouncing him in impassioned tones on the Senate floor for impugning his critics' patriotism.

"It is possible to love America while concluding that it is not now wise to go to war," Mr Kennedy said.

"The standard that should guide us is especially clear when lives are on the line. We must ask what is right for our country and not party."

Throwing his support behind renewed UN inspections and a security council resolution backing the use of force if Saddam Hussein frustrated them, Mr Kennedy said in Washington: "The administration has not made a convincing case that we face... an imminent threat to our national security [or] that a unilateral pre-emptive American strike and an immediate war are necessary."

But the threat posed by Iraq was clear, and if inspections were blocked, "there should be no doubt in Baghdad that the United States Congress would then be prepared to authorise force as well".

Even so, "America should not go to war against Iraq unless or until all other reasonable alternatives are exhausted. There are realistic alternatives between doing nothing and declaring unilateral or immediate war".

War posed a risk to international alliances against terrorism, and should be "a last resort, not the first response".

Mr Kennedy, an outspoken liberal, was condemned by Tom DeLay, the Texan who is the majority whip in the House of Representatives.