NEW YORK, 16 April 2004 — Sen. John. F. Kerry on Wednesday stressed that the chief interest of the United States should be to build a stable Iraq, not necessarily a democratic one — a vision of the troubled country’s political future that is at odds with President Bush.
“I have always said from day one that the goal here...is a stable Iraq, not whether or not that’s a full democracy,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told reporters after conducting a town hall meeting at The City University of New York in Harlem. “I can’t tell you what it’s going to be, but a stable Iraq. And that stability can take several different forms.”
His comments came as the Bush campaign unleashed its harshest critique yet of Kerry’s stance on the conflict in Iraq, accusing him of undermining US troops there. At his news conference, Kerry hastened to add that the United States should not give up on an effort to bring democracy to Iraq.
“You leave with stability, (and) you hope that you can continue the process of democratization. Obviously, that’s the goal,” he said.
“With respect to getting our troops out, the measure is the stability of Iraq.”
Kerry’s comments came one day after Bush, in a nationally televised news conference, emphasized his view of the importance of a democratic Iraq, which he said would encourage reformers to push for democratic changes in other Middle East nations.
“Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country, or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world,” Bush said Tuesday night.
Bush said he is committed to a handover of sovereignty by June 30 to an Iraqi government that has yet to be defined, and elections of a national assembly by January. The assembly would write a constitution, to be voted on by referendum, followed by the election of a permanent government by December 2005.
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Wednesday that Kerry’s comments in New York demonstrates that he is not fully committed to the liberation of Iraq.
“The president said last night that we will stay the course in Iraq until the job is done,” Schmidt said. “And ‘the job is done’ means a free and democratic Iraq that is not a threat to its neighbors.”
Rand Beers, Kerry’s foreign policy adviser, said in an interview that while the Massachusetts senator wants to see a government that fully represents the pluralism of Iraq, “that doesn’t have to be particularly a democracy in the way that we have described a democracy in this country.”
Beers added: “We have been concerned for some time that Bush’s position about having some kind of democratic state was too heroic. It was a goal (the administration) could not clearly define, that we did not know how and when we could get to. What we have tried to do is talk about what are the realistic terms about the transfer of power.”
Kerry on Wednesday continued to criticize Bush for what he has charged is a unilateral approach in Iraq that puts US soldiers at risk.
“We shouldn’t only be tough; we have to be smart,” Kerry said of the US mission in Iraq. “And there’s a smarter way to accomplish this mission than the president is pursuing.”
The Bush aides who assailed Kerry on Wednesday said they were reacting to several recent statements by him in which he criticized the “arrogance” of the United States for going it virtually alone in Iraq and suggested that US troops were targets as a result of Bush’s policies.
Marc Racicot, the former Montana governor who is chairman of Bush’s reelection campaign, said, “There is now even further evidence of the fact that Sen. Kerry continues with an approach that is cynical and defeatist, and it’s embraced within a political attack that is seriously undermining our efforts in Iraq and in the war on terror.”
Joining Racicot in a conference call with reporters was Casper Weinberger, secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration. He chided Kerry for “pessimism” about the US-led efforts in Iraq.
Bush’s Tuesday night news conference and Wednesday conference call indicated an effort by the White House to try to stamp out potential political damage from weeks of violence and increasing casualties in Iraq.
Racicot told reporters that the Iraqi fighters are paying close attention to the US presidential election. “The terrorists know precisely what is going on with efforts to divide our commitment to Iraq,” he said.
Kerry has called for an internationalization of the reconstruction in Iraq and said that the United Nations should be given responsibility for rebuilding the country’s government and infrastructure.
But Kerry, who in 2002 voted for the congressional resolution authorizing use of force against Iraq, declined on Wednesday to declare Bush’s Iraqi policy a failure.
“No, it’s not a failure today,” he said. “It’s just much more difficult, much more costly, much more risky and much more damaging than it had to be.”
