Two US officials embarrass Bush on Iraq
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Statements by two top US policymakers
contradicting administration dogma on Iraq provided
new fuel to relentless Democratic criticism of President George W. Bush
that have jolted his re-election bid.
Paul Bremer, former civilian overseer of
occupied Iraq, said the United States never
had enough troops on the ground to
establish control and was remiss in not
stamping out looting and other violence after
Baghdad fell.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld added
to Bush's embarrassment by saying he had
not seen any convincing evidence linking
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda
terrorists as claimed by
the White House.
Bremer and Rumsfeld both issued
clarifications of their remarks, made in
separate speeches Monday. But
Democratic presidential candidate John
Kerry (news - web sites) wasted no time
Tuesday in using them to score political
points.
"There are a long list of mistakes," the
Massachusetts senator told a rally in the
midwestern state of Iowa, a key
battleground in the November 2 election.
"I'm glad that Paul Bremer has finally
admitted at least two of them."
Kerry said that Bush "needs to tell the truth to the American people"
about Iraq but addded, "I don't know whether the president is
constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the truth."
The Democrat repeated his assertion Saddam was not connected to
Al-Qaeda, drawing flak from Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt
who said it contradicted the view of investigators, including an inquiry
panel on the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"John Kerry's incoherence on the security issues facing our country calls
into question his ability to lead our nation in the war on terror," Schmidt
said in a statement.
Actually, the September 11 panel's final report in July said Iraq had
sporadic contacts with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s movement
but there was no evidence it developed a "collaborative relationship" with
Al-Qaeda.
Kerry has been on a roll since his first televised debate with Bush last
Thursday, where his pointed attacks on the rationale and conduct of the
Iraq war rattled the usually sure-footed president.
Polls unanimously gave Kerry a victory in the encounter, with several
showing him cutting deeply into the Republican's standing on security
issues and pulling even in the overall race.
Even ABC News, which had Bush clinging to a five-point lead, had bad
news for him on Iraq. The number who said he had no clear strategy in
the war rose six points to 48 percent; the percentage who felt Kerry had
a plan rose five points to 42 percent.
Kerry, speaking at a news conference Monday, pulled back somewhat
from his plan to entice other countries to contribute more troops and
take some of the burden off the 133,000 US forces in Iraq.
"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in
body-bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said. But he said he
could involve allies more in securing Iraq's borders and training Iraqi
security forces.
Republicans hope to refocus the campaign on Bush's leadership in the
war on terror after the September 11 attacks, and they said they would
start in Tuesday night's debate between the vice presidential candidates.
But the comments by Bremer and Rumsfeld could complicate their task
as they echoed two main Kerry criticism, that Bush trumped up ties
between Saddam and Al-Qaeda and did not support his March 2003
invasion with sufficient manpower.
"We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer told a conference
in West Virginia, according to a transcript supplied by the organizers.
He said the lack of adequate patrols after the fall of
Baghdad had allowed "horrid" looting. "We paid a big
price for not stopping it, because it established an
atmosphere of lawlessness."
Bremer later sent a statement to the Washington Post,
which carried his original remarks, to stress his belief
"that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq."
Rumsfeld, in an appearance at the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York, seemed to back away from his
assertions in September 2002 of a decade-old history of
contacts between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.
The defense chief, a key shaper of Iraq policy, said
there were differences in the intelligence community
as to what the relationship was. "To my knowledge, I
have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the
two," he said.
But in a statement issued Monday, Rumsfeld said his
comment was "misunderstood," and added: "I have
acknowledged since September 2002 that there were
ties between Al-Qaeda and Iraq." |
