Kerry: Bush's Iraq Choices Costing Americans at Home
Wed Sep 8, 2004 11:14 AM ET
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By Patricia Wilson
CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Wednesday challenged President Bush's decisions before and after the Iraq war and linked the $200 billion cost of the war to economic woes in the United States.
After months of defending charges of inconsistency on Iraq, the Massachusetts senator switched to offense with a speech at the site where Bush laid out his case for the ouster of Saddam Hussein because he could threaten the United States with weapons of mass destruction.
"I would not have made the wrong choices that are now forcing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war -- $200 billion that we're not investing in education, health care and job creation here at home," Kerry said.
The Democratic nominee, fighting to catch up to Bush two months before the Nov. 2 election, told supporters at the Cincinnati Museum Center that the war in Iraq had consequences at home as well as abroad.
"While we're spending that $200 billion in Iraq, more than 8 million Americans are looking for work ... and we're told that we can't afford to invest in job training and job creation here at home," Kerry said. "Because of this president's wrong choices, we're spending $200 billion in Iraq while the costs of health care have gone through the roof."
The Kerry campaign on Wednesday also launched its first television advertisement focusing on Iraq. The 30-second spot will run in battleground states.
"George Bush. $200 billion for Iraq. In America, lost jobs and rising health care costs," a narrator says. "George Bush's wrong choices have weakened us here at home."
Because Kerry voted for the Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq and later voted against $87 billion to fund operations there and in Afghanistan, Bush has called him a flip-flopper and a political opportunist. Kerry says he backed giving the president authority to go to war but not how Bush handled the conflict.
Since Kerry said last month that he would have voted for the resolution even if he had known that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, Bush has tried to convince voters that they agreed on the need to get rid of the Iraqi leader.
Kerry's attack on Bush's pre- and post-war decisions came as the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq passed 1,000 and Vice President Dick Cheney said that if the Democrat were elected, "the danger is that we'll get hit again" by terrorists.
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