Bush Sees Failure in ‘Global Test’

Calling it perhaps the “most disturbing” moment from his debate against Democratic candidate John F. Kerry, President Bush on Friday criticized the Massachusetts senator for saying that any decision to launch a preemptive military strike should pass a “global test.”

“Sen. Kerry said America has to pass some sort of global test before we can use our troops to defend ourselves,” Bush told supporters in Manchester. “Think about that. He wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government.”

“I’ll work with the international community. But I will never subject America’s national security to an international test,” Bush said.

The Kerry camp disputed Bush’s interpretation of Kerry’s comment and said the president had taken the line out of context.

Bush’s remarks came the day after a debate in which many instant polls and analysts said the president’s performance lagged behind Kerry’s. Both men took to the campaign trail Friday to amplify points they had stressed during the debate and to criticize comments the other had made.

In assailing Kerry, the president was referring to a comment Thursday night in which the senator was explaining whether he would be willing to launch a preemptive strike, as Bush did in Iraq.

“No president through all of American history has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in anyway necessary to protect the United States of America,” Kerry said during the debate.

“But if and when you do it ... you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you’re doing what you’re doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.”

Bush used his speeches Friday to take on several of Kerry’s assertions from the debate, as if making points that he could have made Thursday night but did not. Campaign aides say they rewrote Bush’s usual stump speech aboard Air Force One on a morning flight to a rally in Allentown, Pa.

Bush mocked Kerry for what the president said was the “cornerstone” of his opponent’s plan to win the war on terrorism: to hold a summit.

“I’ve been to a lot of summits,” Bush said. “I’ve never seen a meeting that would depose a tyrant or bring a terrorist to justice.”

Some Bush supporters at the president’s rallies Friday said he could have done better in the debate, though they stuck by him.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this report.