“I don’t trust this administration’s definition of where they’re going or what they’re going to do,” he said. “They’ve already shifted everything. They shifted the reason for the war. They’re capable of shifting anything.”
Kerry outlines conditions for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq if he’s President.
Kerry Sets Test for Iraq Withdrawal
Candidate Seems Unlikely
To Commit to Terminating
Presence of U.S. Troops
By JOHN HARWOOD and JACOB M. SCHLESINGER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 16, 2004; Page A5
CHARLESTON, W. Va. — John Kerry set a three-part test for removing U.S. troops from Iraq if he is elected president, while warning that President Bush might commence a more rapid draw-down this fall to improve his re-election prospects.
The three conditions, Mr. Kerry said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, are “to measure the level of stability” in Iraq, “to measure the outlook for the stability to hold” and “to measure the ability … of their security forces” to defend Iraq. Until each condition is satisfied, he added, “I will provide for the world’s need not to have a failed state in Iraq.”
Mr. Kerry’s remarks, two weeks before he accepts the nomination of a Democratic Party with deep misgivings about the war, indicate the Massachusetts senator isn’t preparing to spell out a timetable for rapid withdrawal of the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq. To the contrary, he suggested that Mr. Bush was more likely to do so, saying “I’ve heard [it] said by many people” that the White House might be gearing up to withdraw troops before the November election.
“I’m prepared for any political move” on Iraq, Mr. Kerry said. “I’d put nothing past them.”
White House spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis promptly dismissed that possibility. “The troop levels in Iraq have always been guided by what commanders in the field have said is necessary to accomplish the mission,” she said. “No other factor would enter into it.”
Looking weary from the campaign sprint since he named North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as his running mate last week, Mr. Kerry said he doesn’t contemplate “an open-ended commitment” of U.S. troops. But nor would he pledge to end the U.S. presence in Iraq, even by the end of his first term.
“At the end of my first term I would consider it a failure of my diplomacy if we haven’t reduced the number significantly,” Mr. Kerry said. But “I certainly can’t tell you numbers. … The key at this point is to have a stable, nonfailed state that is moving toward democracy and has security sufficient for the government to stand on its own.”
Kerry senior foreign-policy adviser James P. Rubin said the three-part test the candidate articulated was more specific than his previous admonitions that American troops couldn’t leave until Iraq had become more stable and secure. Mr. Rubin noted that some portion of the U.S. troop deployment might be able to return home as Iraq moves closer to meeting Mr. Kerry’s conditions. But Mr. Kerry declined to spell out the benchmarks that he would use to measure conditions in Iraq, or specify any incremental troop reductions along the way.
“I have a plan for how we can get there” by enlisting greater international support, Mr. Kerry said aboard his campaign plane. “I’m not going to negotiate my plan in the newspapers. But I will get there in ways that this president can’t because he has burned the bridges of credibility and burned the alliances. They need to be re-established with … a new president.”
The issue of Iraq has posed a challenge for Mr. Kerry throughout his campaign. In the fall of 2002 he voted with a Senate majority to give President Bush authority to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein. Later, as war opponent Howard Dean shot to the front of the Democratic nomination race, Mr. Kerry was thrown on the defensive and criticized Mr. Bush for misusing the authority he obtained to use force. Late last year Mr. Kerry voted against legislation to satisfy the president’s request for an additional $87 billion in war-related spending — a vote that Mr. Bush and his campaign have harshly criticized in recent days.
But as he prepares for a convention that his campaign wants to use to introduce him more fully to the American public, Mr. Kerry is determined to present himself as a leader of strength, one who would more effectively pursue the same goals Mr. Bush has established for progress in Iraq and the broader anti-terror war. Instead of acting promptly to reduce troop strength, he said he would consult with military commanders to determine how many more troops might be needed in the near term to safeguard Iraq.
“I know how to do that,” said Mr. Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who has previously accused the president of insufficiently taking the needs of U.S. troops into account. “I think I’ll do that more effectively than this president, and I’ll … listen to them with greater respect than this president and this secretary of defense did.”
Derided by the Bush team as a flip-flopping legislator, he made the same charge about shifts in the president’s position following the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, among other setbacks.
“I don’t trust this administration’s definition of where they’re going or what they’re going to do,” he said. “They’ve already shifted everything. They shifted the reason for the war. They’re capable of shifting anything.”
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