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"Forty-three days before the election," Bush said, "my opponent has now suddenly settled on a proposal for what to do next, and it's exactly what we're currently doing."
Not so, said Kerry.
He noted that just last week the administration acknowledged that it has spent less than $1 billion of the $18 billion committed a year ago for reconstruction. The week before, he said, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that the number of newly trained Iraqi security forces was less than half the 210,000 he claimed last February. And with just three months to go before the scheduled elections, he added, the United Nations has less than 25 percent of the personnel it will need to play the central role in supervising the vote that Bush had agreed to earlier this year.
"President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track," Kerry said. "Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families ... ."
In his speech to supporters in Derry, N.H., Bush seized on Kerry's apparently contrary statements about Saddam during the Democratic primary campaign last year - that "those who believe we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president."
Although Bush said Kerry's Iraq proposals mirrored his own, his campaign put out a strongly worded - and contradictory - statement. "John Kerry's latest position on Iraq is to advocate retreat and defeat in the face of terror," said spokesman Steve Schmidt.
(sorry for the post order switching. Blogger keeps doing weird things to the time stamps for some reason)