WASHINGTON, April 7 - The surge of violence in Iraq has created vast political complications for Democrats and Republicans, as President Bush struggled on Wednesday to address doubts about his foreign policy and Senator John Kerry sought to challenge the conduct of a war he voted for two years ago.
The difficulties facing both men were evident throughout the day. As scenes of violence in Iraq flashed across television screens, Mr. Bush was mostly out of sight, on his ranch in Crawford, Tex., even as some of his conservative supporters began expressing concern that Mr. Bush's Iraq policy could diminish his re-election prospects.
Mr. Kerry was in Washington, pressing ahead with a long-planned major speech on the issue that he expected to be the centerpiece of the campaign, the economy. But, faced with repeated questions about his own views of the war in a series of interviews he had scheduled to promote his economic plan, Mr. Kerry diverted from his script to offer some of his strongest criticism yet of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. In an interview on Wednesday with American Urban Radio Networks, he described that policy as "one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I've been in public life."
Still, even as he attacked Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry was notably vague in saying how he would handle the matter as president. His advisers said he had no plans to offer a policy speech about a war that aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry alike said they now expected to provide a bloody backdrop for the campaign for months.
"Right now, what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I'm not the president, and I didn't create this mess so I don't want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven't made," Mr. Kerry said on Wednesday on CNN.
Mr. Kerry ignored two questions shouted to him by reporters at a meeting he held with economic advisers, about whether he would "take out" Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite clergyman, a pool report said.
"You guys coming?" Mr. Kerry said to Robert E. Rubin, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, as he walked away. . . .
Mr. Kerry's remarks on the deterioration in Iraq reflect the extent to which he has yet to come up with any proposals to distinguish himself from Mr. Bush about what might be done there now. His national security adviser, Rand Beers, said Mr. Kerry would support an increase in troop strength along the lines that the Pentagon is now advocating.
Mr. Kerry urged Mr. Bush to abandon his vow to transfer power to a provisional government on July 1, charging that Mr. Bush was acting more out of concern with the domestic election calendar than in an orderly transition of power in Iraq.
"I think the June 30 deadline is a fiction and they never should have set an arbitrary deadline, which almost clearly has been affected by the election schedule in the United States of America," he said in a National Public Radio broadcast.
One of Mr. Kerry's former rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was an unwavering supporter of the war, called on Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry to "reach common ground on the issue of sending more troops in Iraq." . . .
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/politics/campaign/08POLI.html> ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>