Bush Takes Rhetorical Offensive

President Bush, facing a new report on Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs, criticism from the former U.S. administrator in Iraq and new attacks from Sen. John F. Kerry, today will aim to redirect the campaign debate as he gives an abruptly scheduled speech on terrorism and the economy.

The president rarely makes last-minute changes to his schedule, but the White House announced Monday that Bush would give what it calls a “significant” speech in Pennsylvania. Bush originally was slated to speak there on medical liability reform.

The change was made as Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, has gained in some public opinion surveys following last week’s debate with Bush.

The Bush campaign has long argued that Kerry has “flip-flopped” on support for the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and the No Child Left Behind education law, among other issues. But Bush is expected today to argue that Kerry’s alleged vacillating has ultimately landed him in the wrong place on many policies, said a senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking.

Although today’s speech was still subject to late changes, the president planned to offer a sharper critique of his rival’s policy positions with the goal of shifting the campaign focus away from Bush and back onto Kerry, said the strategist. “It’s a pivot away from ‘flip-flop’ to the content of Kerry’s record, both on foreign policy and domestic policy,” the strategist said.

Bush’s speech also comes as the White House is seeking to put its cast on developments that have raised new questions about the administration’s record on Iraq.

On Tuesday, Kerry seized on the news that L. Paul Bremer III, the Bush administration’s former top administrator in Iraq, had told private audiences that the United States, after deposing Hussein’s regime in Iraq, did not sent enough troops there to establish security and end looting.

“We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness,” Bremer said Monday at an insurance conference in West Virginia. “We never had enough troops on the ground.”

Bremer’s comments were first reported by the Washington Post.

Kerry has repeatedly said that Bush failed to send enough troops to Iraq, and that he “rushed to war without planning for what happens afterwards.” On Tuesday, he cited Bremer’s comments to boost his argument.

“For weeks, I’ve been asking the president of the United States to level with the American people and to be candid about the situation in Iraq and about what we face,” Kerry told reporters outside a middle school in Tipton, Iowa.

“Maybe he’s simply unwilling to face the truth and to share it with the American people. But the president’s stubbornness has prevented him from seeing each step of the way the difficulties and the ways in which we best protect our troops and best accomplish this mission,” Kerry said.

The White House and the Bush campaign deflected questions about Bremer’s statements, saying that the president always looked to his military commanders and to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on troop needs.

“Ambassador Bremer himself has also repeatedly said that he is not a military planner, and that when the issue of troop levels arose, he deferred to military commanders in the field for those decisions,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Still, Kerry faulted the administration for failing to secure Iraq after Hussein was deposed, saying: “Our kids are being shot at today from the ammo of weapons from the ammo dump that they didn’t guard.”

The president’s speech today in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., comes on the same day a report will be made public by the senior U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that is expected to give both Bush and Kerry material to fuel their campaigns.

Officials have said the report will say that arms inspectors found no evidence that Baghdad produced chemical or biological weapons after 1991 or resumed its nuclear arms program. Those conclusions could allow Kerry to argue that Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq has been further discredited.

But the report, by Charles A. Duelfer, head of the CIA-run Iraq Survey Group, is also expected to cite indications that Hussein intended to resume illicit weapons programs if freed from U.N. inspections and trade sanctions -- allowing Bush to argue that the Iraqi dictator was a threat.

The Bush administration is navigating several other foreign policy challenges in the weeks before the U.S. election, among them Saturday’s presidential election in Afghanistan, another event that Bush and Kerry are likely to characterize differently on the campaign trail. It will be the first national election there since the United States routed the ruling Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Campaigning on Tuesday, Kerry said that Bush and his administration “have utterly failed in their diplomacy and statesmanship” in building international support for the effort in Iraq.

But for the first time, the Democratic candidate acknowledged that he could face some challenges in persuading other nations to help stabilize and rebuild the country.

“What I will do is bring new credibility, a fresh start, a presidency with the trust that will bring the allies to the table,” Kerry said. “Now, does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they’re not, and I understand that. What it means is that we have to get them to take on different roles.”

Kerry also disputed Bush’s often-repeated contention that Kerry, as a senator, had access to the same intelligence that the president did before the war. Kerry cited a recent New York Times report that the administration did not reveal doubts about some of its prewar intelligence.

He said the administration “presented to the American people evidence of the intelligence of this alleged nuclear program ... as a ‘slam dunk.’ That’s how they presented to us -- not, as we are now learning, as this highly controversial, highly questioned, very skeptical presentation that we’re now learning about.”

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Chen reported from Washington, Gold from Iowa. Times staff writer Ronald Brownstein contributed to this report.