Kerry Vows ‘Significant’ Troop Reduction

Sen. John F. Kerry said Sunday that he did not envision sending more troops to Iraq if he wins the presidency and would view his first term as “unsuccessful” if he failed to bring a significant number of them home.

In a round of network television interviews, the Democratic presidential nominee declined to lay out details of how he would eventually extract 140,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, but said he would have more credibility with Arab and European allies to build a stronger coalition to stabilize the country.

“I would consider it an unsuccessful policy if I hadn’t brought significant numbers of troops back within the first term, and I will do that,” Kerry said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

“I’m going to not lay out my whole plan here. I need to be able to negotiate as a president.”

Responding to President Bush’s accusation that his 20-year Senate record lacked notable achievements, Kerry also said that he “led the fight” to, among other things, block oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and put 100,000 new police officers on the streets.

Kerry paid scant attention to his Senate record in his acceptance speech Thursday at the Democratic National Convention, and Republicans have used that dearth of remarks to attack him.

“It’s like the lost years that he doesn’t want to talk about,” Mathew Dowd, Bush’s chief campaign strategist, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“He’ll talk about something 33 years ago, his Vietnam experience, which he should be lauded for, but he won’t talk about what he’s done for the last 20 years.”