Bush Mocks Kerry On Iraq

(CBS/AP)  President Bush mocked rival John Kerry's stand on the Iraq war Tuesday and rejected the Democrat's timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops as the Republican campaigned with Kerry pal and Vietnam War hero Sen. John McCain.

Seeking to shore up his support in the military rich, GOP-leaning Florida panhandle, Mr. Bush assailed Kerry on the dominant issue of the campaign as the incumbent made his 24th trip to the swing state that narrowly ensured his election in 2000.

"Now, almost two years after he voted for the war in Iraq, and almost 220 days after switching positions to declare himself the anti-war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance," Mr. Bush said. "After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Sen. Kerry now agrees with me."

Mr. Bush added sarcastically that Kerry still had time to change his position: "There are still 84 days left in the campaign."

In October 2002, Kerry voted to give the president the military authority to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — a vote he said Monday that he stands by despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. But the four-term Massachusetts senator added that Mr. Bush used the authority poorly, rushing to war with limited allied support and little thought to an end game.

Kerry's national security adviser, Rand Beers, said Tuesday that "the issue has never been whether we were right to hold Saddam accountable, the issue is that we went to war without our allies, without properly equipping our troops and without a plan to win the peace."

Beers was the No. 2 anti-terror official in Bush's National Security Council until he resigned in March 2003, just after the Iraq invasion. He posed questions for Mr. Bush, among them: "Knowing what you know now, do you still believe that you made no mistakes in how you took this country to war?"

Kerry also said Monday that he hoped to begin reducing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq within six months of taking office if he is elected. "It is an appropriate goal to have," he said, but added that achieving it would depend on broader international assistance, better stability within Iraq and other related factors.

Mr. Bush said Tuesday he opposed Kerry's proposal.

"What we don't want is to cut short the mission. We don't want politics to decide the mission," Mr. Bush said at a question-and-answer session with supporters in Niceville, Fla.

"The key is not to set artificial timelines" that would, Mr. Bush said, signal to the enemy, "Gosh, all we've got to do is wait them out."

Kerry was campaigning Tuesday in the swing state of Nevada, where he sought to exploit local opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.

"But this isn't just a Las Vegas issue or a Nevada issue. It's an American issue," Kerry told fire and rescue workers at a school in Las Vegas. "Under the Yucca Mountain plan, more than 50,000 shipments of waste would travel just yards away from homes, hospitals, parks and playgrounds in states across this country."

Kerry charged the president with flip-flopping on the issue, first opposing and now supporting creation of the repository in Nevada. Republicans have leveled the same charge against Kerry, saying he supported the project on several occasions.

But Kerry says those were procedural votes, and when the real votes were taken he opposed the project.

Kerry talked about nuclear waste after leaving his last stop in Arizona, where he pledged that a Democratic White House would listen and respond to financially strained families. He was winding down a Southwestern train trek and steering his coast-to-coast campaign into Nevada and California.

The president was joined in Florida by McCain, the Arizona Republican and forner POW who has come to Kerry's defense on several occasions during the campaign. Most recently, McCain called on the White House to repudiate an ad that accused Kerry of lying about his decorated military record in Vietnam.

The White House declined.

McCain and Mr. Bush were foes in 2000, who displayed little mutual admiration. McCain joked in the 2000 campaign that as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he slept more soundly knowing that Mr. Bush was defending the shores of Texas from invasion.

There was no talk of disputes Tuesday.

"My friends, this president understands the challenge," McCain told nearly 10,000 Bush supporters in Pensacola.