WASHINGTON, Oct 4: Democratic presidential hopefuls, bolstered by a new belief they can beat US President George Bush, teamed up on Saturday to attack the credibility of a White House under fire over the invasion of Iraq and an intelligence leak.
In brief speeches at the Democratic National Committee’s fall meeting, four of the party’s 10 contenders for the 2004 nomination skewered Bush for dishonesty and incompetence on everything from the US economy to the exposure of an undercover CIA officer. Six others took their shots on Friday.
Florida Senator Bob Graham, lagging in the polls and struggling to raise money, made no mention of reports earlier this week he was about to drop out of the race.
With surveys showing Bush’s approval ratings slipping, Graham, civil rights activist Al Sharpton, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, blamed the president for a host of recent bad news — rising poverty levels, fewer Americans with health insurance, the escalating cost of Iraqi reconstruction and the CIA leak.
“We see an administration moonwalking on trying to come to who is guilty of the leaks that risked security for Americans,” Sharpton said. “Where is Ken Starr when we need you?”
The Justice Department is investigating whether someone at the White House, CIA, Pentagon or State Department illegally disclosed the identity of a CIA operative whose husband challenged Bush’s Iraq weapons threat claims.
Edwards derided Bush’s request for $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq as “billion-dollar giveaway” that would be better spent at home.
“We will not give this president a blank check, we will not give this president a free ride and we will not give this president four more years,” he said.
‘CLUELESSNESS’ AND ‘ARROGANCE’: Mr Graham, a three-term senator and former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blasted Bush for a “loss of global respect,” “cluelessness” on the economy and “arrogance” on Iraq.
“We were lied to when President Bush led us into war in Iraq,” he said. “The president should apologize to the American people for misleading us.”
A preliminary report from the top CIA weapons hunter in Iraq, David Kay, found no weapons of mass destruction, which the war was fought over, but plenty of circumstantial evidence that programs to develop such arms had existed.
Mr Gephardt ridiculed Bush as the “vanishing” president, a master of “flim-flam and photo opportunities.”
Jobs, the budget surplus, civil liberties, US allies, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had all disappeared since Bush took office, Gephardt said, declaring, “Now we’ve got to make George W. Bush vanish.”
The Democratic rivals also took a few jabs at each other, with newcomer Wesley Clark and leading fund-raiser Howard Dean the main targets.
In a dig at Mr Clark, a retired four-star Army general and former NATO commander who officially declared himself a Democrat only recently and entered the White House race just over two weeks ago, Edwards said being a Democrat for him was “a matter of the heart” not “a matter of convenience.”
Mr Sharpton urged that a Michigan plan to allow Internet voting be rejected because it would disadvantage black voters who did not have computers.—Reuters
