Bush Defends Self on Missing Explosives, Rips Kerry
Oct 27, 7:55 PM (ET)
President George W. Bush speaks at a campaign rally in Lititz, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,...
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By Steve Holland
PONTIAC, Mich. (Reuters) - President Bush insisted on Wednesday 380 tons of missing explosives in Iraq might have been removed prior to the arrival of U.S. forces in 2003 and he attacked Democrat John Kerry for making a campaign issue out of it.
"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander-in-chief. Unfortunately that is part of a pattern of a candidate who will say anything to get elected," Bush told about 17,000 roaring supporters in the Silverdome stadium on a day of campaigning in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
Bush met with about two dozen black leaders, including boxing promoter Don King, on his first visit to Michigan in three weeks. A recent poll showed Bush with 18 percent support among African-Americans, double the 9 percent he received from in 2000.
Polls show the race in Michigan has tightened up weeks after it appeared to be headed for Kerry.
Bush coupled his defense over the explosives with lengthy, direct appeals to Democrats who might be leaning his way and could make the difference in the closely fought election on Tuesday.
"Many Democrats in this country do not recognize their party anymore, and today I want to speak to every one of them in the state of Michigan. If you believe America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence in our ideals, I would be honored to have your support and I'm asking for your vote," Bush said in Pontiac.
With him for the day was Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, a conservative Democrat who in an angry speech at the Republican National Convention said his party had abandoned him and that Bush had to be re-elected to win the war on terror.
"The political pundits and talking heads said I looked mad and I sounded angry. How very perceptive of them, because I wish more of my party's leaders had the same will to win this war as does President Bush," Miller said in Vienna, Ohio.
Kerry has raised the disappearance of the hundreds of tons of high explosives from the Al Qaqaa storage facility, saying it was an example of Bush bungling the Iraq war. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear watchdog said the site was never secured by the U.S. military after the March 2003 invasion.
Bush accused the Massachusetts senator of making "wild charges" about the missing explosives and about the failed search to find Osama bin Laden. Kerry claims Bush muffed the Bin Laden mission by delegating it to Afghan warlords in late 2001.
Bush said Kerry's top foreign policy adviser, Richard Holbrooke, had admitted the facts were not known about what happened to the explosives. |
