As viewed by France,Kerry, & the NYT~~~ Bush is 'in confusion' about terror, Kerry says
P Note: Whose side is Kerry on?????]
Maria Newman/NYT NYT
Saturday, September 25, 2004
iht.com
NEW YORK In a sharp attack on how President George W. Bush is handling the war on terror, John Kerry said Friday that the number of terrorist attacks in the world was increasing while the Bush administration was "in confusion" about how to respond.
"We hear the president, the commander in chief, proclaiming one day that this war can't be won, and then saying something different the next day," Kerry said to an audience in Philadelphia. "And we hear the secretary of defense himself wondering whether the radicals are recruiting, training, and deploying more terrorists than we are capturing or killing."
He continued hammering home a theme from the past few days that the president was "living in a fantasy world of spin" because Bush had spoken of progress in the Iraq war, even as privately some of his senior advisers and publicly some members of his own party worried about growing violence there.
On Friday at Temple University, Kerry told how he intended to deal with terrorism. "My priority will be to find and capture or kill the terrorists before they get us," he said.
Kerry has grown more aggressive in the past few days in taking on Bush on the issues of Iraq and terrorism, which voters have said were foremost in their minds as they entered the last few weeks before the election. And he has been increasingly aggressive in saying what he would do differently.
"With all of these misjudgments, all the miscalculations and all the mistakes, the president still says he wouldn't do anything different," Kerry said. "I would. I will make very different choices in the war on terrorism."
His remarks came a day after a visit to Washington by the Iraqi interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi. The visit served more to reinforce the starkly differing views of the campaigns about whether the situation in Iraq was getting better or worse.
On Thursday, Bush said, "You can understand it's tough and still be optimistic," while Allawi vowed to hold elections in Iraq in January, even though "they may not be perfect" because of increased violence in some parts of the country. Kerry responded by saying the prime minister was contradicting himself, one day saying that terrorists were pouring into the country, another day saying the terrorists were on the defensive.
On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney said Kerry would be a weak opponent to terrorists, The Associated Press reported. He said Kerry had "given every indication of a lack of resolve and conviction to prevail" in Iraq.
Cheney also repeated criticism of Kerry's comments on Allawi, saying Kerry had been disrespectful.
Earlier in the week, Kerry said the president had allowed the war in Iraq to become a distraction from the war on terrorism, and offered his prescription for how to disengage the United States without losing the war. Many of his supporters praised that speech, saying it finally made clearer distinctions between him and the president.
On Friday, Kerry set forth a detailed seven-point proposal for fighting the war on terrorism. His plans included going after those who finance terrorist efforts, including those in Saudi Arabia.
"I will do what President Bush has not: I will hold the Saudis accountable," Kerry said, in a discussion that drew a standing ovation and his loudest applause.
He said that, since 9/11, there had been no prosecutions of terrorist financial backers in Saudi Arabia, and only a few in other places. Kerry vowed to work with American allies, with the World Bank and international financial institutions "to shut down the financial pipeline that keeps terrorism alive."
"And I will pursue a plan to make this nation energy-independent of Mideast oil," he said. "I want an America that relies on our own innovation and ingenuity, not the Saudi royal family."
Kerry also said he would increase the number of troops in Iraq by 40,000, strengthen intelligence systems and shut down the supply route of deadly weapons to the terrorists from other countries. In addition, he said he would increase homeland security, including better protection at the nation's ports and more security in vulnerable areas such as subways.
Kerry said that any plan to fight terrorism had to go beyond sending in troops. His plan includes efforts to keep terrorists from increasing their ranks and promoting the development of free and democratic Islamic societies.
To keep the ranks of terrorists from growing he said, Americans would have to become smarter about countering Al Qaeda's efforts to win "the heart and soul of the Muslim world."
"We will win this war only if the terrorists lose that struggle," he said. "We will win when ordinary people from Nigeria to Egypt, to Pakistan, to Indonesia know that they have more to live for than to die for."
He said that many of the terrorists' recruits were coming from poor Muslim communities. Under his plan, the United States could use its economic power to help poor Muslim countries in exchange for their "living up to goals of social and economic progress."
The New York Times
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