Bush Insists He Has Made America Safer
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By Steve Holland
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (Reuters) - Under fire for intelligence failures at home and abroad, President Bush (news - web sites) tried on Monday to convince American voters he has made them safer since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and told them "we were right to go into Iraq (news - web sites)."
Faced with polls that show many believe the terror threat against them has increased due to the Iraq war, Bush argued that wars against Iraq, Afghanistan (news - web sites) and al Qaeda have made them safer, as has diplomacy that led Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction programs.
"Today because America has acted, and because America has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer," Bush told employees at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where components of Libya's nuclear program are being stored.
Bush's war against terrorism was supposed to be an easy sell on the campaign trail, and is an important plank of his re-election effort.
But the Iraq war has spawned doubts among Americans. In a recent NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll, 51 percent of Americans said they felt the threat of terror was increased, not reduced.
His Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) of Massachusetts, responded by saying Bush's policies had made the country less safe by failing to secure nuclear material that could fall into the hands of terrorists and by allowing North Korea (news - web sites) to become more of a threat.
"It's not enough just to give speeches. America will only be safer when we get results," he told reporters in Boston.
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