Kerry goes for the jugular

John Kerry accused President Bush today of neglecting the fight against terrorism by going to war in Iraq and said his Republican rival had left America less safe.
"Instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, the president rushed to a new war in Iraq," the Massachusetts senator said in a speech at Temple University. "The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy - Al Qaeda."

"The president's misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win," he said. "Iraq is now what it was not before the war - a haven for terrorists."

Kerry also pledged to hold bilateral talks with North Korea and fight for tough sanctions against Iran if it failed to suspend its uranium enrichment program permanently. He outlined a plan to fight terrorism that he first proposed several months ago aimed at denying individuals and groups the ability to organize and attack -- a plan the Bush campaign called a copy of Bush strategies. Kerry said he would build a better military and intelligence apparatus, deny terrorists weapons and financing, move against worldwide terrorist havens and recruitment centers and promote freedom and democracy in Muslim countries. Kerry also vowed to "hold the Saudis accountable" by publicly prosecuting "terrorist financiers" in Saudi Arabia and said he wanted to free America from reliance on the "Saudi royal family" for oil.

A day earlier, Kerry told The Columbus Dispatch that the president's actions in Iraq and elsewhere show Bush masquerading as a mainstream conservative while pursuing extremist policies.

"I don't view these people as conservatives," Kerry said. "I actually view them as extreme, and I think their policies have been extreme, and that extends all the way to Iraq, where this president, in my judgment, diverted the real war on terror — which was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida — and almost obsessively moved to deal with Iraq in a way that weakened our nation, overextended our armed forces, cost us $200 billion and created a breach in our oldest alliances."