Des Moines, Iowa ? Democrat Dick Gephardt and rival Howard Dean intensified their war of words in the party’s presidential debate Monday, squabbling over Iraq, Medicare and the front-runner’s record as governor of Vermont.

Although the eight Democratic hopefuls participating in debate agreed they did not like a GOP-pushed Medicare prescription drug bill pending in Congress and found much to criticize in President Bush’s foreign policy, Dean found himself on the defensive.

Both Gephardt and Sen. John Kerry launched rhetorical broadsides against the front-runner, and Dean and Gephardt engaged in the sharpest exchanges. When Gephardt of Missouri accused Dean of trying to balance his state’s budget by cutting vital services to the needy, Dean snapped back that Gephardt “is a good guy, but his research folks need a little help.”

The two-hour debate, sponsored by cable channel MSNBC, was the seventh since Labor Day, but the first in Iowa, which has its first-in-the nation caucuses Jan. 19.

Polls show that Dean is the front-runner nationally.

Early in the debate, Kerry joined Gephardt in assailing Dean’s statements in the 1990s that he would slow the growth of Medicare.

“I’d like to slow the pace of this debate,” Dean responded.

Gephardt accused Dean, who served as governor for nearly 12 years, of resorting to cuts in services for the poor and disabled to try to balance his state’s budget.

“He cut Medicaid, he cut the prescription-drug program … He cut funding for the blind and disabled,” Gephardt said. He said that Dean cut services for the “most vulnerable” people.

On an issue certain to be front and center in the 2004 election, Kerry was asked about last week’s 4-3 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that a law prohibiting gay marriages was unconstitutional. The court told the state legislature to modify the law.

“I would urge the Legislature to do precisely what the Constitution requires. It is a matter of equal protection under the law,” Kerry said. He said the state’s highest court “drew a distinction” between church-sanctioned marriages and the rights that a state offers couples.