CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Sen. Chris Dodd began his visit to New Hampshire on Thursday with criticism of the war in Iraq and politicians who engage in clever political moves.

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat seeking his party’s presidential nomination, has been a ferocious critic of how the Bush administration has managed the war. He trails Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in polls in this state, where audiences have been pushing Democratic candidates to be more aggressive in lambasting the war.

Dodd, 62, gave legislators what they didn’t get last weekend from Clinton, who supported a nonbinding resolution against sending more troops to Iraq. He said voters gave Democrats power in November to act, not talk.

“This was debating about debating. This was the House and the Senate at some of its worst … I think we missed an opportunity to put our foot down and stop that (proposed increase in troops in Iraq),” he said.

Dodd proposed an alternative to the nonbinding resolution, formally known as a sense of the Senate.

“We have a sense of the Senate (resolution) on asparagus,” Dodd said, “They don’t mean a whole lot.”

He later told reporters, “This was all clever stuff. But there are kids dying there.”

The 25-year veteran of the Senate told state lawmakers that he heard familiar rhetoric in the Bush administration’s allegations that Iran was behind improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

“I saw those IEDs in 2005,” Dodd said. “There’s nothing new about this … Excuse me for being skeptical.”

Instead, the discussion about Iran is a distraction from the disaster in Iraq. He said Iran is a major challenge but it shouldn’t be immune from diplomacy.

“You’ve got to engage in diplomacy whether you like it or not,” Dodd said. “We need a surge of diplomacy. There’s an absence of it right now.”

Dodd also repeated a criticism of fellow candidate Obama, although he didn’t use the first-term senator’s name.

“Experience matters,” Dodd said. “We’ve been through six years of on-the-job training,” referencing Bush.

He shrugged off anemic poll numbers by citing other come-from-behind primary candidates: Bill Clinton and John Kerry.

“You proved them wrong,” Dodd said. “It’s my job to prove them wrong again.”