General Franks may get pissed about the explosives and start rolling. God I hope so, he's the General Patton of our lives.
Patton wouldn't have let Rumsfeld roll over him on the number of troops issue like Franks did. But Franks is indeed pissed at Kerry; check this out:
Already has:
abcnews.go.com
Oct. 28, 2004 - Bitingly personal, President Bush called Sen. John Kerry too weak and wavering for wartime leadership Thursday while the Democrat held Bush responsible for missing explosives in Iraq. "The commander in chief is not getting his job done," Kerry said.
The blunder should cost Bush his presidency, the challenger argued. The Republican incumbent fired back: "John Kerry is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time."
For the fourth straight day, the candidates exchanged harsh words over the disappearance of nearly 400 tons of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation. The 11th-hour political stir is a reflection of how much the war in Iraq and terrorism have overshadowed domestic affairs throughout the closely fought contest.
Many voters, even in economically strapped battleground states, are judging the candidates on their ability to lead a nation at war. Thus, character is a final-hours issue.
"A president cannot blow in the wind," Bush said in a stinging reference to Kerry. In neighboring Ohio, the four-term Massachusetts senator called on his rival to "start taking responsibility for the mistakes that you've made."
Five days before Election Day, the polls were close and the crowds huge. Looking out at 10,000 faces at a Bush rally, failed GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole quipped, "I couldn't get a crowd like this in 1996."
Across the country, anxious voters and election official braced for an uncertain outcome. The election commission in Milwaukee threw out a complaint by Republicans who said nearly 6,000 addresses on the city's voter rolls may not exist.
Voters in Florida, the site of the 36-day recount in 2000, jammed phone lines demanding absentee ballots.
Time running short, the campaigns reached into their near-empty arsenals of TV ads. Bush's new commercial, taking issue with Kerry's national security record, declares, "Apparently, there really is nothing John Kerry won't say."
Kerry opens his latest commercial with five words that should warm hearts throughout the campaign-weary battlegrounds: "Soon, the campaign will end," he said.
Pop culture merged with politics as rocker Bruce Springsteen endorsed Kerry and sang at the Massachusetts senator's rally in Madison, Wis., that a fire marshal said attracted tens of thousands. Bush didn't have the Boss, but country singer Sammy Kershaw warmed up the crowd in affluent Westlake, Ohio.
Earlier, Kerry donned a Boston Red Sox hat to celebrate the World Series victory of his home-state team. Not everybody was a team player, however; Boston pitcher Curt Schilling told a TV audience to "vote Bush next week," then scheduled a campaign appearance with the president in New Hampshire on Friday.
A spate of new state polls had Bush ahead in Florida, the Democrat leading in Ohio and Michigan and the candidates essentially tied in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Oregon.
Private polling conducted for the candidates themselves showed the race even tighter. Both campaigns believe they lead in the contested states by a percentage point or two.
Bush's polling, which showed him making gains last weekend, flattened out this week, and aides blamed the missing weapons flap for stopping their boss' momentum.
That was certainly Kerry's intention when he accused Bush of "shifting explanations" for the missing explosives.
"Here's the bottom line they're not where they are suppose to be," Kerry said, and then in a direct challenge to Bush. "You were warned to guard them. You didn't guard them. They're not secure."
The Pentagon has said the weapons could have been moved before the United States invaded in March 2003. But in a potential blow to Bush's case, the U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at the installation.
Campaigning for Bush, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani wandered off message when he said troops in Iraq, not the president, bore the responsibility for searching for the explosives.
That drew a quick rebuke from Kerry running mate John Edwards. "Our men and women in uniform did their job," he said in Minnesota. "George Bush didn't do his job."
The back-and-forth continued when retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who oversaw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, said at a Bush rally that Kerry "denigrates, disrespects our troops."
Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't mince words either, scolding critics of her husband's promise to bring allies into Iraq. "The perpetration of certain myths that diplomacy and alliances are a sign of weakness is Neanderthal," she said in Pittsburgh.
For the second straight day, Bush accused Kerry of jumping to conclusions about the missing explosives, calling it a dangerous thing for a wartime president to do. "Senator Kerry will say anything to get elected," Bush asserted while accusing Kerry of building a "record of weakness" and trading "principle for political convenience."
Same to you, replied Kerry. The Democrat said of Bush: "He shouldn't be our commander in chief." |
