Kerry says Bush sought to hide loss of Iraq arms
By Patrick Healy and Rick Klein, Boston Globe, October 27, 2004
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Democratic challenger John F. Kerry accused President Bush yesterday of covering up the disappearance of Iraqi explosives after the US-led invasion, charging that the incumbent "tried to hide the information until after the election" as part of a broader political strategy to mislead voters about setbacks in Iraq.
At a rally late yesterday in Las Vegas, Kerry went even further, suggesting that the missing weapons had been used against American troops.
"Those ammo dumps have been looted and raided, and kids and our young American forces are being shot at from weapons stolen from the ammo dumps that this president didn't think were important enough to guard," said Kerry, citing no evidence of the link between attacks on troops and the missing explosives.
Bush, facing a second day of criticism over the reports on the missing 377 tons of munitions, did not respond directly to the charges, even as the Russian government urged the UN Security Council to consider returning weapons inspectors to Iraq to investigate the disappearance of the high explosives.
Instead, he left it to his vice president, Dick Cheney, to dismiss Kerry's charges as Bush courted undecided Democrats on a bus tour through parts of Wisconsin and Iowa that favored Al Gore in 2000.
Bush campaign advisers, meanwhile, hammered away at the credibility of the missing weapons story, saying it will be viewed by voters as an election-eve conspiracy to harm Bush.
Kerry, speaking to a friendly audience at the University of Wisconsin campus in Green Bay, blasted Bush for not commenting on the missing explosives.
He extended his criticism to the White House's behind-the-scenes preparation of a new budget request for an additional $70 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he called "an incredible price tag for rushing and going it almost alone in Iraq."
"Mr. President, what else are you being silent about? What else are you keeping from the American people?
How much more will the American people have to pay? The American people deserve a commander in chief who will tell the truth in good times and in bad," the Democratic nominee said, sparking chants of "Kerry, Kerry" and loud applause.
Cheney dismissed Kerry's criticism by noting that the toppling of Saddam Hussein led to the confiscation of hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons and explosives.
"If our troops had not gone into Iraq as John Kerry apparently thinks they should not have, that is 400,000 tons of weapons and explosives that would be in the hands of Saddam Hussein, who would still be sitting in his palace instead of jail," Cheney told supporters in Pensacola, Fla.
He also said that it was "not at all clear" whether the missing explosives "were even at the weapons facility when our troops arrived in the area of Baghdad."
Republican groups sent out e-mails to their supporters and members of the media citing an NBC report that said the weapons were missing by the time troops got to the facility in April 2003.
Senior White House political adviser Karl Rove told reporters traveling with the Bush campaign that Kerry's touting of the missing explosives story will backfire.
Because it was first reported by the New York Times barely a week before Election Day, many swing voters will view the story as an attempt by liberal-leaning media to defeat a Republican president, Rove said.
"There's going to be a lot of people who say, 'Oh, wait a minute here,' " Rove said.
"By the time it's batted around, it's going to be a huge mistake for the Kerry campaign to have embraced it."
But yesterday, one portion of the Republican counterattack appeared to be undermined with a report on MSNBC.
A member of the NBC news crew who was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division said that troops did not search the facility for weapons on its way to Baghdad because it "was more of a pit stop there for us."
The disappearance raised questions about why the United States didn't do more to secure the Iraqi military installation at Al Qaqaa, south of Baghdad, where the explosives were stored, and why it refused to allow UN inspections to resume after the invasion.
UN officials said yesterday that the explosives disappeared after the invasion began March 19, 2003, but the precise timing remains unclear -- including whether it was after UN inspectors urged in April that the explosives be secured against looters.
US Ambassador John Danforth told reporters that the Iraq Survey Group, the US team sent to Iraq after the war to search for weapons of mass destruction, was looking into the loss of the explosives.
Danforth, who takes over the Security Council presidency on Nov. 1, was reluctant to bring the issue to the council.
"I think that this is more of a matter of tracking down the facts than to just have a debate about it," he said.
Kerry yesterday ratcheted up his rhetoric, saying explicitly for the first time that the missing munitions could be used to attack "our country."
The previous day, after the first reports of the missing munitions, Kerry said the nation and US troops overseas were "less safe" and "at risk."
"When the president is faced with the consequences of his own wrong decisions, he doesn't confront them, he tries to hide them," he continued.
The Kerry campaign issued a commercial yesterday describing the explosives as "the kind used ... for terrorist bombings."
Bush himself yesterday sought to keep the emphasis on economic issues and taxes as he traveled by bus in western Wisconsin and eastern Iowa.
His policies are helping small businesses grow, the president said, while Kerry's would stifle them.
Yesterday's bus tour took the president to three counties that he lost in 2000, as well as one that he narrowly won.
Such visits are a break from the Bush campaign's previous pattern of visiting heavily Republican areas.
"Many Democrats in this country do not recognize their party anymore," Bush said in Onalaska, Wis.
"And today I want to speak to every one of them. If you believe America should lead with strength and purpose and confidence and resolve, I'd be honored to have your support, and I'm asking for your vote."
In addition, Bush struck a moderate tone on gay rights in an interview broadcast yesterday.
The president told ABC's Charles Gibson: "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."
The Republican Party platform calls for banning both gay marriage and legal equivalents such as civil unions.
At a campaign rally in Albuquerque last night, Chester Nez, an 83-year-old Navajo Indian, gave a ceremonial blessing to Kerry -- the same one he gave the Red Sox at Fenway Park last April in hopes it would reverse the curse that some say has kept the team from winning a World Series for decades.
Nez is well known in New Mexico as one of the 29 original so-called code talkers, who used their native language to devise a secret code for World War II American radio transmissions.
"The Red Sox are forever grateful," Kerry said afterward, "and I'm going to be grateful on Wednesday morning, Nov. 3."
Healy, traveling with the Kerry campaign, reported from Wisconsin. Klein, traveling with the Bush campaign, reported from Wisconsin and Iowa.
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.
Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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