XPost: ny.politics, nj.politics, ca.politics 
 XPost: alt.politics.democrats 
 From: ob110ob@aatt.net 
  
 Posted on Tue, Oct. 26, 2004 
  
 Candidates exchange harsh words on Iraq 
  
 KERRY CALLED CONSISTENTLY, 
 DANGEROUSLY `WRONG' ON 
 NATIONAL SECURITY 
  
 By James Kuhnhenn, William Douglas 
 and Matt Stearns 
  
 Knight Ridder 
  
 PHILADELPHIA - Sen. John Kerry leveled 
 one of his harshest denunciations of 
 President Bush's handling of the war in 
 Iraq on Monday amid reports that 380 
 tons of powerful explosives had disappeared 
 from a former Iraqi military installation. 
  
 Campaigning in Colorado and Iowa, Bush 
 accused Kerry of being ``consistently and 
 dangerously wrong'' on national security 
 issues and suggested that Kerry would 
 employ a ``cut and run'' policy if elected. 
  
 The Democratic candidate's broadside 
 came shortly before he was joined in 
 Philadelphia by former President Bill 
 Clinton in his first campaign appearance 
 since heart bypass surgery last month. 
  
 ``Now we know that our country and our 
 troops are less safe because this president 
 failed to do the basics,'' Kerry said at a 
 morning rally in Dover, N.H. ``This is one 
 of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the 
 great blunders of this administration. 
 The incredible incompetence of this 
 president and this administration has put 
 our troops at risk and put this country at 
 greater risk than we ought to be.'' 
  
 Bush used a morning rally in Greeley, Colo., 
 and stops in Council Bluffs and Davenport, 
 Iowa, to sustain his increasingly harsh 
 attack on Kerry. 
  
 ``During the last 20 years, in key moments 
 of challenge and decisions for America, 
 Senator Kerry has chosen the positions 
 of weakness and inaction,'' Bush told a 
 rally in a heavily Republican district in 
 northern Colorado. Quoting signature 
 phrases from President John F. Kennedy's 
 1961 inaugural address, Bush said, 
 ``Senator Kerry has turned his back on 
 `pay any price' and `bear any burden,' 
 and he has replaced those commitments 
 with `wait and see' and `cut and run.' '' 
  
 Bush didn't address the missing explosives. 
 Instead, White House press secretary Scott 
 McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force 
 One that the interim Iraqi government 
 informed the International Atomic Energy 
 Agency about the missing cache on Oct. 
 10 and that the IAEA passed the information 
 on to national security adviser Condoleezza 
 Rice five days later. She informed Bush. 
  
 Monday night, Pentagon spokesman Bryan 
 Whitman said coalition forces were present 
 in the vicinity of the site both during and after 
 major combat operations, which ended May 
 1, 2003 -- and searched the facility but found 
 none of the explosives material in question. 
 That raised the possibility that the 
 explosives had disappeared before U.S. 
 soldiers could secure the site in the 
 immediate invasion aftermath. 
  
 The Pentagon would not say whether it 
 had informed the nuclear agency at that 
 point that the conventional explosives 
 were not where they were supposed to be. 
  
 The New York Times reported Monday that 
 nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives had 
 disappeared from a former Iraqi military 
 installation that's now abandoned and 
 unsecured, despite warnings from the 
 International Atomic Energy Agency. 
  
 The missing explosives didn't deter Bush 
 from giving a positive assessment of events 
 in Iraq. He said that despite terrorist acts 
 in Iraq -- including beheadings and the 
 weekend massacre of Iraqi security 
 forces -- the U.S.-led coalition forces 
 are winning the war. 
  
 ``The terrorist insurgents hate our progress, 
 and they fight our progress,'' Bush said. ``But 
 they will not stop our progress. We will stay 
 on the offense against these terrorists and 
 we will prevail.'' 
  
 Campaigning in western Minnesota, a 
 conservative part of a key swing state, 
 Vice President Dick Cheney also did 
 not mention the missing weapons 
 cache in Iraq. Instead, he questioned 
 Kerry's truthfulness, citing a report 
 that cast doubt on Kerry's assertion 
 that he had met independently with 
 members of the United Nations 
 Security Council before the war in Iraq. 
  
 Kerry spokesman Bill Burton accused 
 Cheney of trying to change the subject 
 from the missing weapons in Iraq. Burton 
 said Kerry had a ``closed meeting and 
 a private discussion'' with ``a group of 
 representatives of countries sitting on 
 the Security Council.'' The meeting 
 occurred on Sept. 30, 2002, Burton 
 said. In a nod toward local interests, 
 Cheney said the Bush administration 
 supported snowmobiling in national 
 parks and promised to protect the 
 sugar industry, an important part of 
 the agricultural sector in this region, 
 where sugar beets are a big crop. 
  
 Later, at a town hall meeting in Wilmington, 
 Ohio, Cheney praised the administration's 
 handling of Iraq. Iraq is ``a remarkable 
 success story to date when you look at 
 what's been accomplished overall,'' 
 Cheney said, ``and I think the president 
 deserves great credit for it.'' 
  
 In Philadelphia, Clinton made little 
 reference to Iraq, focusing on the 
 economic conditions that he said 
 Kerry would improve. 
  
 ``Their plan is more of the same,'' he said. 
 ``They gave two huge tax cuts to upper-income 
 people like me and to special interests, they've 
 run these big deficits . . . and they're saddling 
 it on our children. John Kerry's got a better 
 plan.'' 
  
 He praised Kerry's campaign, recalling days 
 during the Democratic primary contest when 
 Democrats had given Kerry up for dead and 
 even this summer when many Democrats 
 despaired that Kerry was letting Bush get 
 the best of him. 
  
 In September, just days before his surgery, 
 Clinton himself called Kerry and engaged 
 him in a 90-minute analysis of what Kerry 
 needed to do. Around then, old Clinton 
 hands began to join the campaign, 
 among them former Clinton spokesmen 
 Joe Lockhart and Michael McCurry. 
  
 ``I'm very proud of the campaign John 
 Kerry has run. He never gives up,'' Clinton 
 said. 
  
 The Kerry camp sees Clinton as an 
 especially powerful draw with blocs of 
 voters that Democrats think they must 
 motivate to get the high turnout Kerry 
 will need to win, among them black, 
 Latino and Jewish voters. 
  
 After the rally, Kerry and Clinton lunched 
 together and participated in a teleconference 
 with about 2,000 black ministers across 
 the country as part of a get-out-the-vote 
 drive. 
  
 Clinton was scheduled to campaign in 
 Florida today. McCurry said Clinton 
 would determine his pace on a 
 day-to-day basis depending on his 
 stamina. But he said Clinton planned 
 to campaign later this week in New 
 Mexico, Nevada and in his home state 
 of Arkansas, where Bush appears to be 
 losing his lead. 
  
 Kerry, meanwhile, dropped plans to stump 
 in Colorado where polls show Bush's lead 
 increasing. McCurry, however, said the 
 campaign intended to maintain an ad 
 presence in the state. 
  
 For today, the campaign planned events 
 in Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico 
 before bedding down in Sioux City, Iowa. 
 James Kuhnhenn reported on the Kerry 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
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