MILWAUKEE — Republican John McCain's estimate of U.S. troop levels in Iraq touched off squabbling with Democrat Barack Obama yesterday, the latest turn in the presidential rivals' escalating disagreement over the war.

The likely GOP nominee told an audience Thursday: "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."

Obama responded: "That's not true and anyone running for commander in chief should know better."

In fact, U.S. troop levels are not yet down to levels before President Bush's troop increase last year, a strategy shift McCain had pushed for some four years before the president authorized it.

Prior to the increase, there were 130,000-135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

As of this week, that number was 155,000, and the Pentagon plans to drop that to 140,000 by the end of July.

The McCain campaign blamed a parsing of verb tense and semantics. McCain himself insisted yesterday that he didn't misspeak.

2 TEXAS DELEGATES ENDORSE OBAMA

AUSTIN, Texas — Barack Obama picked up two Texas superdelegates, bringing him closer to locking up the Democratic presidential nomination.

Texas Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie and his wife, Democratic National Committee member Betty Richie, endorsed Barack Obama for president late yesterday.

"I believe Senator Obama is the candidate who can best provide the leadership and change Texans desire," Boyd Richie said in a statement issued by the party.

"Senator Obama has the skill and ability to unite Americans from all walks of life and put our country back on the right track."

Hillary Rodham Clinton narrowly won the state's primary March 4, but Obama has prevailed in two rounds of caucuses that also determine pledged delegates from Texas.

The final division of those caucus delegates comes next week at the state convention in Austin.

CLINTON: DELEGATES WILL CHOOSE SOON

HELENA, Mont. — Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday she expects uncommitted superdelegates to begin making the choice that will decide her marathon Democratic primary race against Barack Obama soon after Tuesday's primaries in South Dakota and Montana.

In a conference call with Montana reporters, Clinton was asked about the effort by top Democratic leaders to push for a quick end to the fight for the presidential nomination after next week's primaries.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and party chairman Howard Dean will urge uncommitted delegates to choose sides.

Clinton said: "I think that after the final primaries, people are going to start making up their minds. I think that is the natural progression that one would expect."

Clinton said superdelegates — the party and elected officials who can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses — will have to decide who is the stronger candidate in the fall to run against Republican John McCain.

PRIEST APOLOGIZES FOR CLINTON JAB

CHICAGO — He's a white priest at a largely black church. He's held hands with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. He's been arrested and battles anyone he thinks has wronged his parish — from gun dealers to a local Catholic sports league.

Now the Rev. Michael Pfleger is something else: the latest thorn in the side of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Racially charged comments Pfleger made last week mocking Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton — as a guest at Obama's church — triggered a quick response from Obama, who wants nothing to do with a racial firestorm like the one generated by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

While Pfleger is not nearly as close to Obama as Wright had been, he has donated to the candidate's state Senate and presidential campaigns and sat on a Catholics for Obama committee until a few weeks ago.

Obama made it clear he wasn't happy with the comments — in which Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" — and said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

Pfleger, too, issued an apology, saying he was sorry if he offended Clinton or anyone else.