Kansas City, Mo. ? The anti-war credentials that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are brandishing on the campaign trail might not do them much good this week in Kansas City.

As featured speakers at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the top Democratic presidential candidates could face a challenge in defending their views without sounding critical of their hosts.

“It’s Hillary and Obama in the lion’s den,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Other speakers, however, should get a reception like Derek Jeter stepping to the plate at Yankee Stadium.

President Bush, who will speak Wednesday, is a wartime commander in chief. Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, is a former prisoner of war and military hero. His support of the war has been unwavering.

“We expect a warm reception,” said Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the senator from Arizona.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, also will be there. He opposes a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

That is where Clinton and Obama part company with the VFW, which has its headquarters in Kansas City. Though the two candidates have squabbled over Clinton’s vote in favor of the 2002 war resolution (Obama wasn’t in the Senate yet), both opposed the recent troop surge and both back the eventual withdrawal and redeployment of U.S. forces.

“This is analogous to Bush going to speak to the NAACP,” Goldford said.

There is little question that the positions that Clinton and Obama have taken differ from many of the nearly 6,000 people who will be in Bartle Hall, said John Green, who teaches politics at the University of Akron in Ohio.

“It might serve them well to be able to address that audience and get a respectful showing. It shows they can reach out to a diverse constituency, not an easy thing to do,” Green said.

After all, this is the same group that last year endorsed a Republican who was not a veteran in a high-profile Illinois congressional race over a Democrat who was.

Tammy Duckworth was an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq who lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded. Duckworth, who said she considered the war a mistake, lost the race.

More recently, the VFW publicly backed the troop surge.

“Everybody I spoke to over there felt the surge was working, that we have the right strategy,” said Gary Kurpius, the VFW’s commander in chief, who recently returned from Iraq. “Everyone from the top man down … said if there’s one message to bring back, it is to let Congress and the American public know we want to be successful over here. We are making progress. Give us enough time to finish the job.”

Whatever reaction the candidates get from the VFW, no one will leave with an endorsement.

“We have to work with whoever wins,” Kurpius reasoned.

The VFW’s last endorsement for president came in 1996, when it backed World War II veteran and former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas over President Bill Clinton.

But an endorsement from the group might not carry much political value anyway. Veterans are not a political monolith. Many veterans, including a lot of VFW members, disagree with the Iraq war.

The VFW invited the top two candidates from each party. When Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney had scheduling conflicts, the VFW turned to Thompson, who is expected to formally enter the race next month.