Democrats Will Intensify Attacks on Bush’s Handling of Iraq War

Amid violence in Iraq, the Democrats pledged Sunday to spend the week pressing their criticism of President Bush’s handling of the situation there, saying that he was ignoring rapidly deteriorating conditions in the country.

Sen. John F. Kerry is set to give a speech in New York today in which he intends to intensify his criticism of Bush’s decision-making on Iraq, and the Democratic National Committee is scheduled to hold a news conference in Washington with disgruntled mothers of U.S. troops serving in the war.

The Democratic offensive comes as the president is scheduled to address the United Nations on Tuesday about the situation in Iraq.

“We look forward to the debate,” Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. “There’s an enormous contrast between President Bush’s resolve and commitment to victory on the war on terror and Sen. Kerry’s inconsistence, vacillation and incoherence.”

But Kerry’s advisors believe that the unrest in Iraq is one of the administration’s major weaknesses.

On Sunday, the campaign announced that it was launching a television commercial that would argue that the expense of the war had deprived Americans of funding for education and healthcare.

In the 30-second ad, Kerry says that the war in Iraq is costing $200 billion “because George Bush chose to go it alone.”

“Now the president tells us we don’t have the resources to take care of healthcare and education here at home,” he adds. “That’s wrong. As president, I’ll stop at nothing to get the terrorists before they get us.

“But I’ll also fight to build a stronger middle class. That’s the difference in this election. I believe the next president must do both -- defend America and fight for the middle class.”

Although the war in Iraq is expected to cost $200 billion eventually, so far the tab is about $120 billion.

The Bush campaign responded by noting that Kerry voted against an $87-billion supplemental budget to fund military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then criticized the president for not providing U.S. troops with adequate equipment.

Also on Sunday, Sen. John Edwards, Kerry’s running mate, accused House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) of stooping to the “politics of fear” after Hastert suggested that Al Qaeda wanted Kerry in office.

“Let me say this in the simplest possible terms: When John Kerry is president of the United States, we will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people,” Edwards said in a statement.

“Over and over, this president and his cronies have taken one of our nation’s greatest tragedies and used it as part of a cheap political ploy,” Edwards said. “With their words, they seek to divide us and they dishonor the fallen. They want to scare the American people, but they will pay a price in November.”

Hastert’s remarks about Al Qaeda came Saturday night at a GOP fundraiser in DeKalb, Ill.

“I don’t have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think [Al Qaeda] would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops,” Hastert said of Kerry, according to Associated Press.

Asked by reporters whether he believed that the terrorists could operate better with Kerry in the White House, Hastert replied: “That’s my opinion, yes.”