Democratic candidate John Kerry has accused US President George W. Bush of neglecting the fight against terrorism by going to war in Iraq and said his Republican rival had left America less safe.
Kerry trained his sights on Bush's perceived strength - his leadership after the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States - and accused the president of taking his "eye off the ball" in a struggle "as monumental as the Cold War."
"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."
"As president, I will finish the job in Iraq and refocus our energies on the real war on terror."
Bush has resisted Kerry's attempts to distinguish the Iraq war from the war on terror, and argued that Iraq is a key battleground in it. Bush's campaign said the Democrat's
criticisms lacked regard for their effect "on our troops in the field and our allies fighting alongside them."
Joined by the widows of two victims of September 11 th, Kerry told supporters that Bush had allowed Osama bin Laden to slip away, refused to fully implement recommendations of the September 11 thcommission, underfunded the Department of Homeland Security, encouraged terrorism in Iraq and allowed nuclear dangers in Iran and North Korea to gather.
"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, who is trailing in most national opinion polls less than six weeks before the November 2 ndelection, has pounded Bush on Iraq and terrorism all week in an effort to reframe the way foreign policy is being discussed ahead of the first presidential debate on Thursday.
He has tried to shift the focus from his own October, 2002 vote for the congressional resolution that authorized Bush to use force in Iraq to the way the president "mishandled" that authority in the run-up to, and the aftermath of, the war.
Even when focusing on domestic issues, Kerry now uses the Iraq model. Bush, he asserts, is sticking as stubbornly to his "failed" domestic agenda as he is to an Iraq policy that he said had gone wrong.
"We need national leaders who will face reality," Kerry said. "In the face of all the misjudgments, all the miscalculations and all the mistakes, the president still says he wouldn't do anything different."
Senior advise Mike McCurry said Kerry was "defining what the parameters of this debate will be."
"Drawing these sharp contrasts with Bush on Iraq is very important because this is a fundamentally important issue," he said. "It is the heart of the question about George Bush: is he capable of seeing mistakes and fixing them so we can get them right?"
In his hour-long speech, Kerry 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.