Conor O'Clery
New York
In a sure sign that the gloves are coming off in the 2004 US presidential election campaign, Senator John Kerry yesterday lambasted the Bush administration for policies on Iraq which he compared to those that led to the Vietnam war.
Democrats who voted for the Iraq war in Congress last autumn are now beginning to say - as casualties mount and public opinion turns against the war - they would not have given President Bush authority to attack Iraq had they knew then what they know now.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California protested yesterday that she voted for the war because she believed the administration's claims about the threat posed by Iraq, but now doubts much of the evidence about banned weapons and believes that "clearly the al-Qaeda connection was hyped and exaggerated".
As a much-decorated Vietnam veteran, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry's criticism of the White House war plans carries considerable weight. However, he is on the defensive against anti-war Democrats such as arch-rival Governor Howard Dean, who says he has a credibility problem for supporting the war in a Congress vote last autumn.
"Half the [Vietnam Veterans' Memorial\] wall is filled with the names of people who were there because leaders were filled with pride and wouldn't make the right decisions," said Mr Kerry.
"Pride should not prevent this administration from going to the United Nations and doing what they should have done in the first place," he said.
The new aggressiveness of Democratic politicians coincides with rising anger in US army ranks over extended tours of duty in Iraq. The US media has this week carried unprecedented criticism of Bush officials voiced by US troops on the ground.
"If Donald Rumsfeld was here I'd ask him for his resignation," one soldier named specialist Clinton Deitz told a US reporter bitterly. This drew a sharp retort from Central Command's Gen John Abizaid, who said no one in uniform was entitled to criticise the Secretary of Defence.
CNN yesterday carried interviews with tearful and angry soldiers' wives who said they no longer believed the army because of broken promises about when their husbands would come home.
Mr Kerry also criticised President Bush for using his January 28th State of the Union address to claim that Iraq sought to buy nuclear material from Africa, which the CIA had discredited.
CIA director Mr George Tenet, who has taken responsibility for the claim, testified at a closed Congressional hearing yesterday as several Republicans called for his resignation and Democrats sought to transfer the blame to the White House.
"Remember the old saying, Harry Truman's saying, 'The buck stops here'? Right now, apparently, the buck stops at Langley [CIA headquarters\]," Mr Kerry said in a speech in New York and in television interviews. "And there are a lot of questions about the political input to this intelligence."
In a counter-attack, White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan accused Democrats of politicising the post-war problems. He quoted comments made by Mr Kerry in 1998 saying something should be done about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.