Chicago ? Adding his voice to the newly aggressive chorus of Democrats calling for changes in the U.S. conduct of the war in Iraq, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle urged withdrawal of 80,000 of the 150,000 American troops next year.

Speaking Wednesday at Northwestern University, Daschle also said he had been given “misleading information” about Iraq’s weapons before the war, but said he could not go into specifics.

“I wish I could share with you the misleading information I personally was provided in September and October of 2002,” he said in remarks scheduled for delivery at Northwestern University in Evanston.

The misrepresentations, Daschle said, underscore the need for Congress to repair the nation’s foreign policy initiatives in order to restore the public’s trust in the use of U.S. military power.

“Nowhere as much as on this principle has the president so dramatically failed the country and our military,” the former South Dakota senator – who lost his bid for re-election a year ago – said in prepared remarks.

“Misusing intelligence to start a war in Iraq, failing to plan for its aftermath and refusing to level with the country or our troops about what it will now take to correct those failures is just the start,” he said. And speaking earlier in an interview, Daschle applauded Democratic Senate leaders for holding an unusual secret session on Tuesday to force an investigation of whether intelligence information had been manipulated to drum up support for the war.

Daschle, who recently joined the liberal think tank Center for American Progress in Washington, said a true fix of foreign policy will require what the center calls a “strategic redeployment” of U.S. forces in Iraq.

A key component of the plan includes removing 80,000 of the 150,000 American troops, including all of the Guard and Reserve forces still active in Iraq, after December’s elections in Iraq.