The Australian
Roy Eccleston, Washington correspondent
September 22, 2004
STRIVING to lift his political fortunes, John Kerry has ramped up his rhetoric on Iraq only to find that some of his best attacks are being blunted by ... John Kerry.
With another American beheaded in Baghdad, senior Republican senators attacking George W. Bush's policies, 1000-plus dead US troops and daily car bombings, Iraq ought to be an issue the Democrat challenger can use to maximum advantage.
After all, this was Mr Bush's war; a war of choice built on two false premises: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that it was in cahoots with al-Qa'ida.
But Senator Kerry delivered a speech yesterday at New York University that underlined his big problem: when he tried to put the spotlight on the President's setbacks, the Bush campaign held up a mirror. Senator Kerry claimed that the removal of Saddam Hussein had made the US less safe, and he challenged Mr Bush to adopt a four-part plan that he claimed would bring US troops home within four years, with withdrawals starting mid-2005.
While Saddam deserved "his own special place in hell", his removal was not enough reason to go to war.
"The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure," Senator Kerry said.
But that line looked to be an about-face from his attack last December on fellow Democrat Howard Dean for arguing that Saddam's capture had not made the US safer.
Well armed with Senator Kerry's previous comments, Mr Bush immediately went in the counterattack. "Today, my opponent continued his pattern of twisting in the wind, with new contradictions of his old positions on Iraq," he said. "He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy."
In his attack on Dr Dean, Senator Kerry had declared that "those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president".
Mr Bush wheeled out that quote yesterday and then added that he couldn't have put it better himself.
But Senator Kerry has concluded that even though national security is Mr Bush's strong suit, he has a chance to undermine that advantage if he can sheet home blame to the President for the chaos in Iraq. Senior Republican senators, including John McCain and Chick Hagel, in recent days have publicly criticised Mr Bush's Iraq policies.
The problem is not the strategy but Senator Kerry's credibility. He voted to give Mr Bush the authority to go to war, and has said he would have done so even knowing Saddam had no WMD.
Senator Kerry believed, as Mr Bush did, that Saddam had WMD. And he also appeared to have believed that catching Saddam made the world safer.
At least he did last December, when it was politically advantageous to say so.