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Bush, Kerry clash over Iraq during debate

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., accused President Bush Thursday night of a “colossal error in judgment” by ordering the invasion of Iraq.

“The world is better off without Saddam Hussein,” the president shot back in campaign debate, adding his rival once said so himself.

Going into the first of three debates, polls gave Bush a slight advantage, with several key battleground states exceedingly close. In a 90-minute debate moderated by PBS’s Jim Lehrer, dominated by a war claiming more than 1,000 American lives, Kerry called the conflict a diversion in the broader struggle against terror and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The four-term senator said he could do a better job than Bush of protecting the nation against another Sept. 11-style attack, and pledged to be strong and resolute in fighting terrorism.

“But we also have to be smart … and smart means not diverting our attention from the war on terror and taking it off to Iraq,” Kerry said, as the two men stood behind lecterns 10 feet apart on a University of Miami debate stage. “This president, I don’t know if he really sees what’s happening over there.”

Bush swiftly returned to his theme of Kerry as a man who changes his mind too often to be president.

“He voted to authorize the use of force and now says it’s the wrong war at the wrong time …. I don’t think you can lead if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send to our troops?” said the Republican incumbent.

Bush and Kerry differed over North Korea, Iran and Russia as well as Iraq in a debate limited to foreign policy and terrorism.

Kerry charged that North Korea and Iran both have advanced their nuclear weapons programs during the Bush administration and that both countries are more dangerous now.

“As president, I’ll never take my eye off that ball,” the senator said.

Bush said he believed that a diplomatic initiative currently under way could solve the crisis with North Korea. “On Iran, I hope we can do the same,” the president said.

Bush said that with North Korea, he would continue to pursue a strategy that involves the United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea in talks with North Korea to defuse the crisis. But Kerry advocated bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea to find a solution.

In response to one question, Kerry said Bush had misled the country on the war by pledging to plan carefully, give diplomacy every chance to prevail and more. He said bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, had used the invasion as a recruiting tool for terrorists.

Bush said that was an “amazing claim,” and said the United States, not bin Laden, should decide America’s strategy in the war on terror.

The debate unfolded scarcely a month before the election, the first in a series of high-stakes encounters between the president and his Democratic challenger. The two men meet Oct. 8 in St. Louis and again on Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Kerry’s running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, hold their only face-to-face debate of the campaign Tuesday in Cleveland.