PHILADELPHIA – Sen. John Kerry cited the Iraq war and a huge cache of missing explosives Monday as proof President Bush has “failed the test of being commander in chief.” The Republican slammed his rival as “consistently and dangerously wrong” on national security matters.
In a race of ever-escalating rhetoric, Bush accused the Democratic challenger of “the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking” on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he fell silent on the disappearance of 377 tons of high explosives in Iraq, leaving it to an aide to explain.
Failure to secure the material was “one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration,” Kerry said in New Hampshire.
“Terrorists could use this material to kill our troops, our people, blow up our airplanes and level buildings.”
“The unbelievable blindness, stubbornness, arrogance of this administration to do the basics has now allowed this president to once again fail the test of being the commander in chief,” Kerry said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration’s first concern was whether the disappearance constituted a nuclear proliferation threat. He said it did not.
“We have destroyed more than 243,000 munitions” in Iraq, he said. “We’ve secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed.”
McClellan said the IAEA informed the U.S. mission in Vienna on Oct. 15 about the missing explosives at Al-Qaqaa. He said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice was notified “days after that,” and she then informed President Bush.
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