Washington ? The GOP-controlled Senate gave an election-year endorsement to President Bush’s Iraq policy on Thursday, soundly rejecting Democratic demands to withdraw troops from the 3-year-old war that has grown increasingly unpopular.

Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the Democrats’ position, saying on CNN: “Absolutely the worst possible thing we could do at this point would be to validate and encourage the terrorists by doing exactly what they want us to do, which is to leave.”

But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said, “Demanding a change of course is not irresponsible. It’s not unpatriotic. It is the right thing to do.” He criticized Bush and Republicans in Congress as being “content with no plan and no end in sight.”

The administration repeatedly has said that U.S. troops will stay in Iraq until Iraqi security forces can defend the country against a lethal insurgency that rose up after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

In back-to-back votes, the Senate agreed with the president and turned back two Democratic proposals to begin withdrawing most of the 127,000 American forces in the war zone.

The first, offered by Sen. John Kerry and supported by 11 other Democrats and one independent, would have required the administration to start pulling troops out by year’s end. It also would have set a deadline of July 2007 for all combat forces to leave.

“Redeploying United States troops is necessary,” said Kerry, D-Mass.

Most senators didn’t agree, and the proposal fell on a 86-13 vote.

Minutes later, the Senate defeated by 60-39 a resolution to urge the administration to begin “a phased redeployment of U.S. forces” sometime this year. The resolution would not have set a deadline for the end of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

That vote was largely along party lines.

Siding with all but one Republican were six Democrats – Sens. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and three running for re-election this fall: Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Bill Nelson of Florida and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who also is in the midst of a difficult re-election campaign, was the only Republican supporter of the resolution.

The maneuvering occurred on a $517 billion military measure that the Senate later passed 96-0.