Kerry Accuses Bush of Changing Iraq War Rationale
53 minutes ago
By David Alexander
RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - Democratic front-runner John Kerry (news - web sites) won the endorsement of Virginia's governor on Sunday and resumed his attack on President Bush (news - web sites), who he accused of trying to revise the rationale he used to wage war on Iraq (news - web sites).
At a news conference, Kerry challenged Bush's assertion during a morning talk show that the United States went to war with Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) because it knew he had the ability to make weapons of mass destruction.
"This is a far cry from what the president and his administration told the American people through 2002," Kerry said. "Back then President Bush repeatedly told the American people that Saddam Hussein has got chemical weapons."
"They told us they could deploy these weapons within 45 minutes to injure our troops," the four-term senator from Massachusetts added. "It was on that basis that he sent Americans' sons and daughters off to war."
Kerry, who volunteered and was decorated for his duty in the Vietnam war, met with Gov. Mark Warner over breakfast at the governor's mansion, where they watched the president's interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The Virginia governor later endorsed Kerry for president, a move that will give him a boost in the primary election for the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday.
Warner described Kerry as a candidate who has a "record of fiscal responsibility."
"As someone who inherited quite a budget mess here in Richmond, I know he will be inheriting a similar budget mess when he takes the White House - but his record going back to the 1980s when he broke with some in our party to support Gramm-Rudman (the 1985 balanced budget law) makes him the right man to bring back fiscal sanity to our nation's capital."
"He also critically understands the need for us in this economy to create more jobs here in America," Warner added.
Kerry and Warner later attended services at the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church.
The appearances in Virginia came a day after Kerry won the Democratic caucuses in Michigan and Washington, beating his rivals for the presidential nomination by double-digit margins. The Maine caucuses were taking place on Sunday.
Kerry, speaking to Virginia Democrats late on Saturday, accused the Bush administration of launching a smear campaign against him and charged the president was leading an "extreme" administration that was outside the mainstream of American values. |
