- OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (Reuters)
-- Under fire for intelligence failures at home and abroad, President Bush
tried on Monday to convince American voters he has made them safer since
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and told them "we were right to go into
Iraq."
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- Faced with polls that show many believe the terror threat
against them has increased due to the Iraq war, Bush argued that wars against
Iraq, Afghanistan and al Qaeda have made them safer, as has diplomacy that
led Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction programs.
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- "Today because America has acted, and because America
has led, the forces of terror and tyranny have suffered defeat after defeat,
and America and the world are safer," Bush told employees at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, where components of Libya's nuclear program are being
stored.
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- Bush's war against terrorism was supposed to be an easy
sell on the campaign trail, and is an important plank of his re-election
effort.
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- But the Iraq war has spawned doubts among Americans.
In a recent NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll, 51 percent of Americans said
they felt the threat of terror was increased, not reduced.
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- His Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts,
responded by saying Bush's policies had made the country less safe by failing
to secure nuclear material that could fall into the hands of terrorists
and by allowing North Korea to become more of a threat.
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- "It's not enough just to give speeches. America
will only be safer when we get results," he told reporters in Boston.
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- 'REMOVED A DECLARED ENEMY'
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- A Senate intelligence committee report last week said
U.S. intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction, one of the White House's chief justifications for the war
which removed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power. None was ever found.
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- "Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons
of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq," Bush said. "We
removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing
weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists
bent on acquiring them."
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- Democrats have used the report to accuse Bush of exaggerating
evidence used to justify war against Iraq. Republicans said the Bush administration
was a victim of bad intelligence.
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- Bush said that his policies since the Sept. 11 attacks
on New York and Washington have led to an Afghanistan headed toward elections
and cooperation against al Qaeda with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
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- But problems persist in Afghanistan's attempt to hold
elections after years of Taliban rule. A bomb blast killed at least five
people and wounded 34 in the western Afghan city of Herat on Sunday, raising
new concern about security for landmark polls in October.
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- Bush said al Qaeda was receiving help three years ago
from inside Saudi Arabia with little opposition and that the Saudi government
is now going after al Qaeda in its own country. Critics say Saudi Arabia
only began responding in earnest to the al Qaeda threat after repeated
attacks by militants.
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- After taking a look at centrifuge parts intended for
use in Libya's nuclear weapons program, Bush said its decision to disavow
unconventional weapons was "encouraging evidence that nations can
abandon these ambitions and choose a better way."
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- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=615&
e=2&u=/nm/20040712/pl_nm/campaign_bush_dc
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