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Kerry Says War Siphoning Billions From Home Front

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Times Staff Writer

Sen. John F. Kerry escalated his attacks Wednesday on President Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq, saying it cost $200 billion that America needs for schools, healthcare and other domestic needs.

Speaking at the Cincinnati museum where Bush laid out his rationale for the war nearly two years ago, Kerry said the president’s “wrong choices” on Iraq had “left America without the resources we need so desperately here at home.”

With war costs mounting, the federal deficit has soared to new heights while Bush has shortchanged job training, veterans’ healthcare and aid to local police, Kerry told about 750 supporters.

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“When I’m president, America will once again stand up to our enemies without destroying or denying our best hopes here at home,” he said.

In casting the war as a costly misadventure that has harmed Americans in their day-to-day lives, Kerry sought to reframe the Iraq debate in a way that shifted attention to domestic matters. Polls generally have found voters give Kerry the edge over Bush in dealing with jobs and healthcare, but the president is given higher marks on waging the war against terrorism and other national security issues.

Kerry’s speech Wednesday also seemed aimed at regaining the offensive on Iraq after facing scathing attacks from Bush and his allies over what they portrayed as the Democrat’s shifting positions on the war. The charge of inconsistency on Iraq is at the core of Bush’s broader argument that Kerry lacks strong principles, waffles on key issues and cannot be trusted to lead the country.

Campaigning in Rochester, Minn., after his speech in Cincinnati, Kerry said he had been “absolutely consistent” on Iraq. “I simply have not changed my position one bit,” he told a Minneapolis television station.

Kerry voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. But since then, he has criticized Bush’s use of that authority, saying the president gave inspectors too little time to search for banned weapons in Iraq, failed to build a broad coalition of allies to fight Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and rushed to war with no plan to manage the aftermath.

Nonetheless, Kerry said last month that he still would have voted to authorize the war even if he had known then about the apparent lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

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The congressional vote on the war in 2002 came three days after Bush’s speech at the Cincinnati Museum Center, where he warned that Hussein could attack the U.S. any day with chemical or biological arms. Final proof of the danger, Bush said, “could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Kerry spokesman David Wade described the senator’s Iraq speech at the museum as “an opportunity to return to the scene of the crime,” where Bush made his case for war.

In Bush’s Cincinnati speech, Bush “said that if Congress approved the resolution giving him the authority to use force, it did not mean that military action would be unavoidable,” Kerry told his audience. “But he chose not to give the weapons inspectors the time they needed -- not just to get the job done, but to give meaning to the words ‘going to war as a last resort.’ ”

Recalling his service as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, Kerry said, “If there’s one thing that I learned from my own experience in a war, I would never have gone to war without a plan to win the peace.”

In a new television ad, Kerry also sought to draw a link between the costs of the war in Iraq and Bush’s domestic record. The ad started airing Wednesday in several of the most closely contested states in this year’s race.

“George Bush -- $200 billion for Iraq,” a narrator says in the spot. “In America, lost jobs and rising healthcare costs. George Bush’s wrong choices have weakened us here at home.”

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In response to Kerry’s speech, Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the Democrat had “made the transformation from a candidate on both sides of Iraq to a candidate who is completely incoherent on Iraq.”

“John Kerry has given 12 major speeches on Iraq,” Schmidt said, “and the American people still have no idea where he stands.”

Kerry spoke a day after the U.S. death toll in the Iraq conflict surpassed 1,000. In remarks on Tuesday, as he paid tribute to those killed, Kerry said they had sacrificed their lives “on behalf of freedom in the war on terror.”

His communications director, Stephanie Cutter, sought to explain that remark Wednesday. She said Kerry did not mean to suggest the war was justified by administration allegations of Hussein ties to Al Qaeda. Little evidence of such links has surfaced. Cutter said the intent of Kerry’s comment was to refer to the terrorism fostered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

“Should he have clarified it and said it differently? Maybe,” she said. “But the point remains the same: There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went to war. There is now terrorism there.”

Later, in his interview with the Minneapolis TV station, Kerry responded to Vice President Dick Cheney’s statement Tuesday that electing the Democratic ticket would make the U.S. more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Kerry said the remark showed that Cheney and Bush would “say anything and do anything” to win reelection.

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History of Kerry Remarks on Iraq

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President Bush portrays Sen. John F. Kerry’s stance on the war in Iraq as ever-shifting, charging that his Democratic opponent has changed his position repeatedly. Kerry rejects that criticism. He says his vote in October 2002 authorizing an invasion of Iraq did not mean he agreed with the way Bush went to war. Kerry also defends his vote last year against an $87-billion funding bill that earmarked most of the money for operations in Iraq. He notes that he supported an alternative measure that would have provided the money by rolling back tax cuts for affluent families.

Here are some of his key remarks on Iraq:

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Oct. 9, 2002 (during Senate debate on the resolution authorizing the war):

“I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.... In giving the president this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days -- to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out ‘tough, immediate’ inspection requirements and to ‘act with our allies at our side’ if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force.”

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May 3, 2003 (during a debate among Democratic presidential candidates in South Carolina):

“I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity, but I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him.”

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Jan. 6, 2004 (on MSNBC’s “Hardball”):

Q: “Do you think you belong in that category of candidates who more or less are unhappy with this war? ... Are you one of the antiwar candidates?”

Kerry: “I am. Yes. In the sense that I don’t believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes. Absolutely. Do I think this president violated his promises to America? Yes, I do.”

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March 16, 2004 (at a town hall meeting in West Virginia):

“I actually did vote for the $87-billion [funding bill] before I voted against it.”

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Aug. 9, 2004 (during a stop at the Grand Canyon, when asked whether he still would have supported the resolution authorizing the war had he known that Hussein’s regime did not possess weapons of mass destruction):

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“Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have.”

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Sept. 6, 2004 (speech in West Virginia):

“This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, and he’s cost all of you $200 billion that could have gone to schools, could have gone to healthcare, could have gone to prescription drugs, could have gone to our Social Security. It’s the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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Sept. 8, 2004 (speech in Cincinnati):

“When it comes to Iraq, it’s not that I would have done one thing differently from the president; I would have done almost everything differently from the president.”

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