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When they talk about Iraq, President Bush and U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson don't sound like politicians on the same side of an issue.

Though he's retreated from the swaggering rhetoric of past years, Bush remained resolute about the war during a nationally televised speech last week, saying the United States would not abandon a country it had committed to help achieve democratic government.

But in an interview last week, Wilson, an Albuquerque Republican, expressed deep skepticism about that goal, little sense of responsibility or attachment to Iraq's future and a limited view of U.S. interests there.

"Whether you are in Congress or whether you're the president," she said, "setting out these lofty Jeffersonian ideals of what Iraq should be, at the north end of the Persian Gulf, are unrealistic, and it's not reasonable to expect the American military and all of our diplomatic assets to be able to achieve that."

But on the issue at the forefront of the Iraq debate - when the United States will leave - Bush and Wilson remain similarly vague. And that's red meat for Democrats, who have sought for months to paint Wilson's skepticism about the war as "all talk" because she won't support bills calling for a firm withdrawal date.

"Wilson continues to be all talk and no action on Iraq," a news release this week from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, D.C., said.

Wilson's public pronouncements on Iraq have grown considerably darker since she visited the country after last fall's U.S. election, when she was nearly defeated and saw her party lose control of both houses of Congress. But Wilson has consistently opposed measures that would set a timeline for leaving Iraq. Decisions about troop levels, she says, should be left to commanders on the ground.

In an interview with The Tribune at her Albuquerque office, Wilson said she was heartened by last week's report from Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq. That report, she said, showed significant progress in the effectiveness of Iraqi security forces, which could lead to both a reduced U.S. presence in Iraq and a less risky U.S. role.

Wilson also made prominent use of a chart drawn from Petraeus' presentation to Congress.

That chart shows a stage-by-stage reduction in American troop levels in Iraq, and a shifting focus toward an advisory or "oversight" role as Iraqi units come on line.

But beyond the initial troop reduction announced by Bush on Thursday, the chart doesn't attach a date to any of the later stages.

Beneath the question of when and under what circumstances the U.S. leaves, however, Wilson diverges from both Bush and Petraeus on several key points. Most significantly, they differ dramatically over how important the war in Iraq actually is for the United States.

During a media tour after his appearance before Congress last week, Petraeus said the United States has "huge national interests" in Iraq and said the consequences of "not getting this right" were of a similar magnitude.

Wilson, in contrast, said America has "really quite limited vital national interests" in Iraq - ensuring that the Sunni dominated Al-Anbar province does not become a safe haven for al-Qaida and that the rest of the country doesn't fall apart completely and threaten regional stability.

Asked whether those goals - if achieved - would justify the cost of the war, Wilson said, at some length, that she believed so.

"Obviously, the intelligence was wrong on which we based our decision to go in," she said, referring to pre-war claims that Saddam Hussein had banned weapons, which Wilson said formed the basis for her support of the war.

"But do I believe Iraq is better off with Saddam gone? Yes, I do."

At the same time, Wilson, who earlier this year opposed the U.S. troop surge and its focus on curbing sectarian violence, indicated that she believes the United States has spent too much effort trying to prevent fighting between Sunnis and Shiites.

The United Nations estimated that 34,452 Iraqi civilians fell victim to sectarian killings in 2006. The bodies of about a dozen victims of suspected sectarian killing now turn up in Baghdad every day, down from about 40 a day in January, according to published reports.

About 3.7 million Iraqis have been displaced by violence, with about 2 million fleeing the country, the U.N. says.

"There are levels of ethnic violence that don't rise to that level where it involves other neighbors or it becomes regional in scope," Wilson said. "Now, where is that point? I don't have a precise handle on that."

She added: "We have inter-tribal or communal violence in a lot of countries around the world, including in some areas that are important to the vital interests of the United States."

Wilson's views are not new; she said many of the same things after returning from Iraq in January. But since then, her skepticism has hardened over what she sees as the failure of the Iraqi government to make progress toward "national reconciliation" of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions.

While Bush and Petraeus describe reconciliation as the goal of the U.S. troops surge, Wilson said she no longer believes the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is capable of achieving it.

"Whether because of the way people were selected from party lists or because of the individual personalities involved, they have just been unwilling or unable to pursue reconciliation," she said.

She said she didn't have a "good enough crystal ball" to say whether any other Iraqi leader might do better.

While she said that strengthening the Iraqi army in the absence of an effective civil government could produce problems, she said she did not believe a "strongman" leader would emerge from the army and said she believed the Iraqi army was the best partner for U.S. efforts.

"The Iraqi army is taking more casualties than we are," she said. "They are willing to stand and fight."

Asked what they were fighting for, she said she didn't know.

"I didn't talk to any of them directly," she said.

Despite the differences, Wilson's position finds common ground with Petraeus on a number of counts.

While both expressed varying degrees of disappointment with the Iraqi central government, both said some goals could be pursued through local Iraqi governmental entities.

"All these things were held up as vital at a national level," Wilson said, referring to reconciliation, sharing of oil revenues and other matters. "In fact, maybe it's more important that at the local and regional level things start working."

Wilson also borrowed a phrase used by both Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker as she sought to explain the failures of the Iraqi government, which she said she hadn't expected when she voted to support the invasion.

"There's no Nelson Mandela in Iraq," she said. "If there was, Saddam Hussein probably would have had him killed."