Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2004
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Sen. John F. Kerry lashed out at his Republican
rivals today with some of his strongest language yet, saying that President Bush
and Vice President Dick Cheney are denying the reality in Iraq, and accusing the
administration of concocting evidence to mislead America into war there.
Reacting to a CIA report released Wednesday that showed Iraq did not have a
program to build nuclear weapons, Kerry said the primary rationale the Bush
administration gave to invade Iraq has now been undermined.
"This week
has provided definitive evidence as to why George Bush should not be reelected
president of the United States," Kerry said at a brief new conference outside a
conference center in a Denver suburb where he has been preparing for his next
debate with Bush. "Whether it's the situation in Iraq or whether it's the
situation here in America, he is not being straight with Americans.
"The
primary justification for going to war, the reason the Congress gave the
president au thority to use force, after he had exhausted all the other
remedies, was to disarm Saddam Hussein of the weapons of mass destruction," the
Massachusetts senator said.
Kerry recited examples of the intelligence
the administration offered to prove Iraq had a weapons program, "all designed,
all purposely used to shift the focus from Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, to Iraq
and Saddam Hussein."
"All with the result that the president shifted the
focus from the real enemy, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, to an enemy that they
aggrandized and fictionalized," he added.
The Democrat said that Bush
was in "absolute full spin mode" when he addressed the CIA report this
morning.
"He cited several new reasons for taking America to war and
reiterated the belief that he would do everything exactly as he did it," he
said. "My fellow Americans, you don't make up or find reasons to go to war
after the fact."
With an incredulous chuckle, Kerry added : "This
morning, the vice president actually s aid that the CIA report did not undermine
the rationale for going to war."
"Ladies and gentlemen, the president of
the United States and vice president of the United States may well be the last
two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq," he said.
Kerry said that his rival refused to take responsibility for his handling of
Iraq.
"Does he take responsibility for his mistakes? Does he recognize
publicly how bad the situation is, and lead the way a leader should lead?" he
asked. "Of course not. The president responded with a brand new stump speech
featuring more dishonest attacks on me.
"For President Bush, it's always
someone's else fault," Kerry added.
The senator said that "there is a
clear difference between President Bush and me. You'll always get the truth
from me, in good times and in bad times, and I will never mislead the American
people. The president has not met that standard."
Kerry, who voted to
give Bush authority to go to war, said the CIA report proved that U.N.
sanctions were preventing Saddam Hussein from resuming a program to build
weapons of mass destruction.
But the Bush campaign hastened to note that
Kerry had cited Hussein's supposed weapons program as the justification for his
vote to authorize invading Iraq, and had repeatedly warned over the years that
Iraq posed a threat, even with inspections.
Kerry said today that he
still believes Hussein was a threat, and would have wanted to get congressional
authorization to use force against him if he had been president. But he argued
that there were other ways to neutralize the Iraqi dictator than attacking the
country.
"It is completely consistent that you can see him as a threat
and deal with him realistically, just as we saw the Soviet Union and China and
others as threats, and have dealt with them in other ways," he said.
The
Democrat would not say whether he would increase the number of troops in Iraq if
he is elected, saying only that he would fo llow the advice of military
generals.
"I don't know what I'm going to find on Jan. 20, the way the
president is going," he said. "If the president just does more of the same
every day and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively
speaking."