President Bush accused John F. Kerry yesterday of not knowing "where he stands" on Iraq in a new television ad that splices together footage of seemingly contradictory Kerry comments on the war.
Some of the statements are taken out of context, however, discarding Kerry's criticism of the war and using only phrases in which he was supportive of the administration.
Six hours later, the Democratic presidential nominee released a counterattack spot, charging that the president "still doesn't get it" on Iraq and "has no plan" for quelling the violence there. And in a ratcheting up of the rhetoric, allies of both candidates are running attack ads featuring Osama bin Laden.
The escalating exchanges mark an increasingly personal debate before Thursday's first presidential debate, which will be devoted to foreign policy. In an airwaves battle that erupted over the weekend, an independent conservative group stamped Kerry as weak on terrorists such as bin Laden while the senator accused the Bush campaign of "un-American" tactics.
The Bush ad shows Kerry making various televised comments:
"It was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him."
"I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have."
"The winning of the war was brilliant."
"It's the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."
"I have always said we may yet even find weapons of mass destruction." A graphic asks: "How can John Kerry protect us when he doesn't even know where he stands?"
On MSNBC's "Hardball" in May 2003, when Kerry applauded U.S. troops for a "brilliant" winning of the war, he also said a moment earlier that administration officials "clearly have dropped the ball" in the war's aftermath. He added that "you've got to have the capacity to provide law and order on the streets and to provide the fundamental services."
In the "disarm Saddam Hussein" comment that same month, Kerry also said, "I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity."
Kerry spokesman Chad Clanton said the Bush team is "using fear and dishonest political tactics to distract voters from the deteriorating situation in Iraq. They've got Googling monkeys at the Bush campaign working overtime, slicing and dicing old quotes and then going into the edit room and pulling them out of context."
Bush spokesman Reed Dickens responded that Kerry aides "don't have the credibility to discuss this issue in the wake of embracing a 10th position" on Iraq. "He's got a new wave of advisers who are trying to embrace his indecision and sell it as a strategy."
