Coral Gables, Fla. ? Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton insisted Sunday night it’s time to start pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq as she and her Democratic presidential rivals debated the war on the eve of a much-awaited assessment by U.S. commanding Gen. David Petraeus.

In the first presidential debate ever broadcast in Spanish, the protracted war in Iraq competed for attention with the swirling argument over immigration. On Iraq, Gov. Bill Richardson retorted that Clinton and others who want to leave residual forces there would leave soldiers at risk.

“I’d bring them all home within six to eight months,” the New Mexico governor said in the debate, which was broadcast on Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language network. “There is a basic difference between all of us here … This is a fundamental issue,” he said.

Clinton said that a report being presented in Washington by Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker this week won’t change the basic problem that there is no military solution in Iraq. “I believe we should start bringing our troops home,” she said. “We need to quit refereeing their civil war and bring our troops home as soon as possible.”

All who were asked about immigration at the debate on the campus of the University of Miami said they would address this vexing issue in their first year in office.

Clinton criticized the immigration bill proposed in the last Congress, dominated by Republicans. That legislation would have penalized those who help illegal immigrants. “I said it would have criminalized the good Samaritan. It would have criminalized Jesus Christ,” she said.

Anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas posed questions in Spanish and the candidates had earpieces to hear simultaneous translations into English. The candidates’ responses were simultaneously translated into Spanish for broadcast, and English-speaking viewers could watch using the closed caption service on their televisions.

Not surprisingly for anchors who vocally support a path to legalization for the nation’s estimated 12 million immigrants, both Ramos and Salinas framed their questions with the basic assumption that immigrants, including those in the country illegally, face discrimination and have been unfairly demonized – a view not universally shared in the English-language media.

Richardson, one of two candidates who speak fluent Spanish, objected to the debate rules that required all candidates to answer in English. The rule was designed to make sure that no candidate had an advantage in appealing to the Spanish-speaking audience.

Dodd, who served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, also speaks Spanish fluently. He called for more U.S. engagement with Latin America, including a lifting of trade embargo against Cuba.

“We’re allowing a Hugo Chavez to win a public relations effort in Latin America because we don’t invest enough in Latin America,” he said.

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said he would make Spanish a second national language, but no leading candidate was willing to go that far.

The candidates were asked why they supported a wall along the Mexican border – and not a similar fence along the U.S.-Canadian border – a question that seemed to catch them somewhat off-guard. Most avoided answering directly, saying simply that they believed security was a key part of comprehensive immigration reform.

But there are strong feelings against the Iraq war among Hispanics, so that topic led the debate, with the moderators noting that two-thirds of Hispanics support a withdrawal from Iraq. Kucinich was loudly applauded for saying he would pull troops out.