- GRAND CANYON, Ariz.
(Reuters) - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he
would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against
Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be
found.
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- Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will
face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll
answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe
it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used
that authority effectively."
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- Speaking to reporters from the Powell's Landing on the
rim of the Grand Canyon above a mile-deep drop, Kerry also said reducing
U.S. troops in Iraq significantly by next August was "an appropriate
goal."
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- "My goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship is to get
our troops reduced in number and I believe if you do the statesmanship
properly, I believe if you do the kind of alliance building that is available
to us, that it's appropriate to have a goal of reducing the troops over
that period of time," he said.
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- On that timetable, Kerry's aim would be to pull out a
large number of the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in the first six months
of his administration.
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- "Obviously, we'd have to see how events unfold,"
he added. "I intend to get more people involved in that effort and
I'm convinced I can be more successful than President Bush in succeeding
in doing that. It is an appropriate goal to have and I'm going to try to
achieve it."
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- Kerry refused to say if he had any private assurances
from Arab or European nations that they would help with security and reconstruction
in Iraq but said "right now the administration ... is scrambling and
struggling to try to find a way to do that."
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- "All of this should have happened in the beginning,
all of these things should have been achieved beforehand," he said.
"American presidents should not send American forces into war without
a plan to win the peace."
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- BUSH CHALLENGE
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- Bush last week challenged Kerry, who Republicans accuse
of flip-flopping on Iraq by voting for the war resolution and against the
$87 billion request to fund operations, to say straight out if he would
have voted the same way if only to eliminate the danger that Saddam Hussein
could have developed weapons of mass destruction.
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- "Now, there are some questions that a commander-in-chief
needs to answer with a clear yes or no," Bush said. "My opponent
hasn't answered the question of whether knowing what we know now, he would
have supported going into Iraq."
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- "I have given my answer," Bush said. "We
did the right thing, and the world is better off for it."
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- Kerry challenged Bush to answer some questions of his
own -- why he rushed to war without a plan for the peace, why he used faulty
intelligence, why he misled Americans about how he would go to war and
why he had not brought other countries to the table.
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- "There are four not hypothetical questions like
the president's, real questions that matter to Americans and I hope you'll
get the answers to those questions, because the American people deserve
them," he told reporters.
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- Kerry, who is on day 11 of a two-week coast-to-coast
campaign trip, used the majestic backdrop of the Grand Canyon to criticize
Bush for neglecting America's national parks system and pledged to restore
$600 million he said the president had cut from the budget.
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