Associated Press
October 6, 2004
WASHINGTON —
The White House staunchly defended its Iraq policy Tuesday as new questions
emerged about President Bush's prewar decisions and postwar planning. An
impending weapons report undercut the administration's main rationale for the
war, and the former head of the American occupation said the United States had
too few troops in Iraq after the invasion.
Four weeks before Election
Day, Democrat John Kerry pounced on the acknowledgment by former Iraq
administrator Paul Bremer Monday that the United States had "paid a big price"
for insufficient troop levels.
Bremer, who shot into the national
headlines with his remarks, softened his comments during a speech Tuesday in
Michigan.
"We certainly had enough (troops) going into Iraq, because we
won the war in a very short three weeks," he told an audience of more than 400
people at Michigan State University.
"The point that I have been
making, and that has gotten a little bit distorted in the press recently, is
that, as I look back now, I bel ieve it would have been better to stop the
looting that was found right after the war.
"One way to have stopped
the looting would have been to have more troops on the ground. That's a
retrospective wisdom of mine, looking backwards," he added. "I think there are
enough troops there now for the job we are doing."
Kerry said there was
a "long list of mistakes" that the Bush administration had made in Iraq.
"I'm glad that Paul Bremer has finally admitted at least two of them,"
Kerry said, referring to postwar troop levels and a failure to contain chaos.
At a campaign stop in Tipton, Iowa, Kerry said the question for voters
was whether Bush was "constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the truth" or
was "just so stubborn."
In a rare day spent in Washington, Bush
remained out of sight and silent, letting his surrogates answer Kerry's charges.
His speechwriters polished an address that administration aides said would be a
sweeping indictment of Kerry's policies on Iraq, th e war on terrorism and the
economy.
"It's a comprehensive look at two very different records, one
of accomplishment, and one of being on the wrong side of history over and over
again," Bush campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish said of the
speech.
"The president will talk about the choice we face in this
election between his commitment to success in the war on terror and John Kerry's
record of voting against measures to keep us safe, and attacking policies he
once supported."
The address in the swing state of Pennsylvania was
originally to focus on health care, but the White House reversed course and made
it about Iraq, seeking to blunt a new report on the absence of weapons of mass
destruction there before the war.
Bremer, in a speech last month at
DePauw University in Indiana, said he had raised within the Bush administration
the issue of too few troops and "should have been even more insistent" when his
advice was rejected.
White House spokesman Scott McC lellan refused to
say if Bremer had pleaded with Bush for more troops, saying, "We never get into
reading out all the conversations they had."
Bush consulted military
commanders -- not his hand-picked Iraq administrator -- for guidance on troop
levels, McClellan said, adding, "The lessons from the past, including Vietnam,
are that we shouldn't try to micromanage military decisions from Washington."
In an unusual public acknowledgment of internal dissent, Bush campaign
spokesman Brian Jones said Bremer and the military brass had clashed on troop
levels.
"Ambassador Bremer differed with the commanders in the field,"
Jones said. "That is his right, but the president has always said that he will
listen to his commanders on the ground and give them the support they need for
victory."
Military commanders believed the force level was adequate,
said Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita.
"Before, during and subsequent
to Mr. Bremer's tenure, the military commanders and the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff believed that the level of U.S. forces in Iraq was the
appropriate level, and that was their recommendation to the secretary of
defense."
Kerry said he would listen to military and civilian leaders
if elected.
"Commander in chief means you have to make judgments that
protect the troops and accomplish the mission," Kerry told reporters in Iowa.
"I would listen to all of my advisers and make the best decision possible."
The White House, meanwhile, sought to put the brightest face possible on
the final report by the American weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, due
out Wednesday. In earlier drafts, Duelfer found Saddam had left signs he had
idle weapons programs he someday hoped to revive, but that Saddam did not have
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Even before Duelfer's final
report was issued, McClellan said it bolstered the White House's assertions on
Iraq.
The report will conclude "that Saddam Hussein had the intent and
th e capability, that he was pursuing an aggressive strategy to bring down the
sanctions, the international sanctions, imposed by the United Nations through
illegal financing procurement schemes," McClellan said. "The report will
continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken
seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing
those weapons of mass destruction," he said.
McClellan's use of the
phrase "begin pursuing those weapons" marked a new attempt to gradually back off
the administration's once-firm assertions on Iraq possessing weapons of mass
destruction -- the main justification for the invasion.
Bush, Vice
President Dick Cheney and other top administration officials said repeatedly
before invading Iraq that Saddam did have such weapons and that they posed a
threat not only to Iraq's neighbors but to the United States as well. Later,
the officials said Saddam was pursuing them.