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John Kerry Speaks at NYU; President Bush to Appear Before United Nations Tomorrow

Aired September 20, 2004 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Back here live to Capitol Hill. This hour, a hearing is under way on President Bush's choice to become the next director of the CIA. This time it's the Senate Select Intelligence Committee holding its second hearing on Porter Goss. Democrats have questioned whether the Republican Congressman can be independent and objective.
President Bush will appear before the United Nations tomorrow. He will face an audience that is often critical, and maybe even more skeptical given the contentious presidential election. Mr. Bush is expected to discuss both the military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his administration's global fight against AIDS, illiteracy and hunger.

Our senior U.N. correspondent Richard Roth joins us for a preview of that.

Richard, good morning.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

President Bush will be here tomorrow. Usually it's a Monday during these special high-level general assembly debate weeks. But there will be dozens of presidents, prime ministers already here for a meeting on development and poverty. President Bush two years ago demanded that the U.N. take action against Iraq, or else, and it's that or else that irritates a lot of countries still, and they're not willing to participate in Iraq to help out the United States with economic reconstruction and troops.

But what's riling the U.S. now are puzzling comments last week by Secretary-General Kofi Annan who said in effect that the war was illegal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD BOUCHER, STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN: While we respect his views, I think we've also made clear before that we don't agree. The war in Iraq had a sound legal...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: All right, well, that's State Department spokesman Richard Boucher who said that Kofi Annan's statements last week that the war was illegal was wrong, the U.S. believing it had the legitimacy under 16 existing Security Council resolutions, that it had the authority to go in under resolutions threatening -- quote -- "serious consequences."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan was grilled by a BBC reporter who, in effect, put the word "illegal" in Annan's mouth, and eventually Annan said, if you wish, yes, it is illegal under the charter. Annan thinks the Security Council should have given its final blessing -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Richard Roth at the United Nations. Thank you. And CNN will have live coverage of President Bush's address to the U.N. General Assembly. That is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.

So how does President Bush rate with a broader international audience? Would voters worldwide keep him in power or elect his rival John Kerry?

Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider takes an international sampling.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POL. ANALYST: It's being called a world election in which the world has no vote. Do we know how the rest of the world would vote? Some Americans claim they do.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have heard from people who are leaders elsewhere in the world, who don't appreciate the Bush administration approach and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States.

SCHNEIDER: Maybe they're responding to opinion in their own countries.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're are vast numbers of people, especially in Europe, that are looking at the United States population and cannot understand how they would want to re-elect George W. Bush. It is a simple fact.

SCHNEIDER: Is it? There's evidence it is. Over the summer, University of Maryland researchers asked citizens of 35 countries how they would vote between Bush and Kerry. The result, 30 of the 35, voted for Kerry. Kerry won all but one European country poll.

A Bush campaign official once said Kerry looks French. Apparently the French were impressed. They gave Kerry a 59-point lead. Only 5 percent of the French voted for bush.

What about the Bush administration's closest ally, Britain? Not even close. The British favored Kerry by over 30 points.

The exception? Poland, which Bush carried by a narrow margin.

How about America's neighbors? Canadians went for Kerry by 45 points. Mexicans by 20. In Asia, Kerry carried China, Japan and Indonesia.

Only the Philippines, a former American colony fighting its own Muslim insurrection, went for bush.

In India and Thailand, the race was close. Swing countries?

The overwhelming hostility to President Bush in the world does have consequences for those foreign leaders Kerry was talking about.

QUEST: Look at the damage to those politicians who have been associated with Bush, from Agnar in Spain to Berlusconi in Italy to John Howard now running neck and neck in his own re-election in Australia. With an economy that's booming, he should be walking in. And now look at Tony Blair. Every leader that has stood side by side with George Bush is feeling the electorate's wrath.

SCHNEIDER (on camera): Tony Blair's Labor government faces re- election, possibly as early as next spring. His people are reported to have informed the White House that Blair needs to keep his distance from Bush so as not to endanger his own survival.

Bill Schneider, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And we invite you to watch CNN tonight for "PAULA ZAHN NOW," a closer look at primetime politics, a roundtable discussion with our international reporters. We'll take a point-by-point look at Bush versus Kerry, war and politics. That's at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific.

Live now to New York City, here is Senator John Kerry speaking at NYU. After he gets through these housekeeping items, we expect him to make statements on Iraq.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

KERRY: I am really honored to be here at New York University, at NYU Wagner, one of the great urban universities in America. Not just in New York, but in the world. You've set a high standard, you always set a high standard for global dialogue, as Ellen (ph) mentioned a moment ago. And I intend to live up to that tradition here today.

This election is about choices. The most important choices a president makes are about protecting America, at home and around the world. A president's first obligation is to make America safer, stronger and truer to our ideals.

(APPLAUSE)

Only a few blocks from here, three years ago, the events of September 11th remind every American of that obligation. That day brought to our shores the defining struggle of our times: the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism. And it made clear that our most important task is to fight and to win the war on terrorism.

With us today is a remarkable group of women who lost loved ones on September 11th, and whose support I am honored to have. Not only did they suffer unbearable loss, but they helped us as a nation to learn the lessons of that terrible time by insisting on the creation of the 9/11 Commission.

(APPLAUSE)

I ask them to stand, and I thank them on behalf of our country, and I pledge to them, and to you, that I will implement the 9/11 recommendations. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

In fighting the war on terrorism my principles are straightforward. The terrorists are beyond reason. We must destroy them. As president I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies.

But billions of people around the world, yearning for a better life, are open to America's ideals. We must reach them.

(APPLAUSE)

To win, America must be strong and America must be smart.

The greatest threat that we face is the possibility of Al Qaida or other terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons. To prevent that from happening we have to call on the totality of America's strength: strong alliances to help us stop the world's most lethal weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands; a powerful military, transformed to meet the threats of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction; and all of America's power -- our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, our appeal to the values, the values of Americans, and to connect them to the values of other people around the world -- each of which is critical to making America more secure and to preventing a new generation of terrorists from emerging.

KERRY: National security is a central issue in this campaign.

We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made, and the choices I would make and have made, to fight and win the war on terror.

That means that we must have a great and honest debate on Iraq.

(APPLAUSE)

The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy.

(APPLAUSE)

Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and from our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists.

Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

This month, we passed a cruel milestone: more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq. Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains overwhelmingly an American burden. Nearly 90 percent of the troops and nearly 90 percent of the casualties are American.

Despite the president's claims, this is not a grand coalition.

Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery and skill and resolve. Their service humbles all of us. I visited with some of them in the hospitals and I am stunned by their commitment, by their sense of duty, their patriotism. When I speak to them, when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this: We owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do and what is still to be done.

KERRY: That is an American value.

(APPLAUSE)

Would you all join me? My wife Teresa has made it through the traffic, and I'm delighted that she is here. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

In June, the president declared, "The Iraqi people have their country back." And just last week he told us, "This country is headed toward democracy; freedom is on the march." But the administration's own official intelligence estimate, given to the president last July, tells a very different story.

According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the president is saying to the American people and so do the facts on the ground.

Security is deteriorating for us and for the Iraqis. Forty-two Americans died in Iraq in June, the month before the handover. But 54 died in July, 66 in August and already 54 halfway through September. And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August; more than in any other month since the invasion.

We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever-widening war zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times; a 400 percent increase.

Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra and parts of Iraq are now no-go zones, breeding grounds for terrorists, who are free to plot and to launch attacks against our soldiers.

The radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in suburbs of Baghdad than the prime minister.

Violence against Iraqis, from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation, is on the rise.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating. KERRY: Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours today: unprecedented. Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school. Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 to toss a grenade at a passing U.S. convoy.

Yes, there has been some progress. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq, schools, shops and hospitals have been opened in certain places. In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails.

But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to be able to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they're sitting on the fence, instead of siding with us against the insurgents.

That is the truth, the truth that the commander in chief owes to our troops and to the American people.

Now, I will say to you, it is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it is essential if you want to correct the course and do what's right for those troops, instead of repeating the same old mistakes over and over again.

I know this dilemma firsthand. I saw firsthand what happens when pride or arrogance take over from rational decision-making. And after serving in a war, I returned home to offer my own personal views of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it to those risking their lives to speak truth to power. And we still do.

(APPLAUSE)

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in Hell. But that was not -- that was not, in and of itself, a reason to go to war.

(APPLAUSE)

The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, the president has said that he miscalculated in Iraq, and that it was a catastrophic success.

KERRY: In fact, the president has made a series of catastrophic decisions. From the beginning in Iraq, at every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and he has led us in the wrong direction.

(APPLAUSE)

The first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war, and he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

(APPLAUSE)

His two main rationales, weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaida-September 11th connection, have both been proved false by the president's own weapons inspectors and by the 9/11 Commission.

And just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged those facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the Earth is flat.

(APPLAUSE)

The president also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq. He didn't tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for years, not months. He didn't tell us that he wouldn't take the time to assemble a genuine, broad, strong coalition of allies. He didn't tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn't tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.

And America will pay an even heavier price for the president's lack of candor.

At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.

KERRY: Abroad, other countries will be reluctant to follow America when we seek to rally them against a common menace, as they are today. Our credibility in the world has plummeted.

In the dark days of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos as proof. De Gaulle waved him away, saying, "The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many world leaders have that same trust in America's president today? This president's failure to tell the truth to us and to the world before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.

The president now admits to miscalculations in Iraq. Miscalculations: This is one of the greatest underestimates in recent American history.

(APPLAUSE)

His miscalculations were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment, and judgment is what we look for a president.

(APPLAUSE)

And this is all the more stunning, because we're not talking about 20/20 hindsight, we're not talking about Monday morning quarterbacking. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bipartisan congressional hearings, major outside studies and even some in his own administration, predicted virtually every problem that we face in Iraq today.

KERRY: This president was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military.

The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible and real consequences.

The administration told us we would be greeted as liberators; they were wrong. They told us not to worry about the looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure; they were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots; they were tragically wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy; they were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country, and a police force and an army to secure it; they were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently overpromised and underperformed. And this policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.

(APPLAUSE)

And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials -- the only officials who've lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

KERRY: General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq. He was retired.

Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said it would cost as much as $200 billion. Pretty good calculation. He was fired.

After the successful entry into Baghdad, George Bush was offered help from the U.N., and he rejected it, stiff-armed them, decided to go it alone. He even prohibited nations from participating in reconstruction efforts because they weren't part of the original coalition, pushing reluctant countries even further away. And as we continue to fight this war almost alone, it is hard to estimate how costly that arrogant decision really was.

Can anyone seriously say this president has handled Iraq in a way that makes America stronger in the war on terrorism?

AUDIENCE: No!

KERRY: By any measure, by any measure, the answer is no.

Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all-time low.

Think about it for a minute. Consider where we were and where we are.

After the events of September 11th, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in a legitimate struggle against terrorists. On September 12th, headlines and newspapers abroad declared that, "We are all Americans now."

But through his policy in Iraq, the president squandered that moment and, rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.

(APPLAUSE)

We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and posed no imminent threat to our security.

KERRY: It had not, as the vice president claimed, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

The president's policy in Iraq took our attention and our resources away from other more serious threats to America, threats like North Korea, which actually has weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal, and is building more right now under this president's watch; the emerging nuclear danger of Iran; the tons and kilotons of unsecured chemical and nuclear weapons in Russia; and the increasing instability in Afghanistan.

Today, warlords again control much of that country, the Taliban is regrouping, opium production is at an all-time high and the Al Qaida leadership still plots and plans, not only there, but in 60 other nations.

Instead of using U.S. forces, we relied on warlords, who one week earlier had been fighting on the other side, to go up in the mountains to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered. He slipped away.

We then diverted our focus and our forces from the hunt for those who were responsible for September 11th in order to invade Iraq.

We know now that Iraq played no part. We knew then on September 11th. And it had no operational ties to Al Qaida.

The president's policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem that he said he was trying to prevent.

Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before their war; now it is, and they are operating against our troops.

Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who could someday hit the United States of America.

And we know that while Iraq was a source of friction, it was not previously a source of serious disagreement with our allies in Europe and countries in the Muslim world.

The president's policy in Iraq divided our oldest alliance and sent our standing in the Muslim world into freefall.

Three years after 9/11, even in many moderate Muslim countries, like Jordan, Morocco and Turkey, Osama bin Laden is more popular than the United States of America.

KERRY: Let me put it plainly: The president's policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security, it has weakened it.

(APPLAUSE)

Two years ago, Congress was right to give the president the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This president, any president, would have needed that threat of force to act effectively. This president misused that authority.

(APPLAUSE)

The power entrusted to the president purposefully gave him a strong hand to play in the international community. The idea was simple: We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam, disarm or be disarmed.

A month before the war, President Bush told the nation, "If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail."

KERRY: He said that military action was not unavoidable.

Instead, the president rushed to war, without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went purposefully, by choice, without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted by choice, without making sure that our troops even had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead by choice, without understanding or preparing for the consequences of postwar. None of which I would have done.

Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again the same way.

How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq?

My answer: resoundingly, no, because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.

(APPLAUSE)

Now the president is looking for a reason, a new reason to hang his hat on -- it's the capability to acquire weapons.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, that was not the reason given to the nation, that was not the reason the Congress voted on. That is not a reason today; it is an excuse.

(APPLAUSE)

KERRY: Thirty-five to 40 countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003. Is President Bush saying we should invade all of them?

I would have personally concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing Osama bin Laden.

(APPLAUSE)

I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein -- who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or to America.

The president's insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future. And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new, smarter direction with John Kerry that makes our troops and America safer. That's the choice.

(APPLAUSE)

It is time, at long last, to ask the questions and insist on the answers from the commander in chief about his serious misjudgments and what they tell us about his administration and the president himself.

KERRY: If George W. Bush is reelected, he will cling to the same failed policies in Iraq and he will repeat somewhere else the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure than we can or should be.

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands. But we cannot just throw up our hands, we cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America's security for years to come.

All across this country, people ask me and others, what we should do now every stop of the way. From the first time I spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out a specific set of recommendations from day one, from the first debate until this moment. I have set out specific steps of how we should not and how we should proceed. But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way. This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the president was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day this president makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq, harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago, a year and a half ago.

It's time to recognize what is and what is not happening in Iraq today and we must act with urgency.

Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said that, "We're in deep trouble in Iraq. It doesn't add up to a pretty picture," he said, "and we're going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy."

Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.

We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.

First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone.

KERRY: It is late. I acknowledge that. But the president has to respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

Last spring, after too many months of delay, after reluctance to take the advice of so many of us, the president finally went back to the U.N., and it passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do, but it was late.

That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops, trainers for Iraq's security forces and a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission, and more financial assistance and real debt relief.

But guess what? Three months later, not a single country has answered that call, and the president acts as if it doesn't matter.

And of the 13 billion that was previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.

The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and of Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly, and he should insist that they make good on the U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific but critical roles in training Iraqi security personnel and in securing Iraqi borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq's future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq's oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, is this more difficult today? You bet it is. It's more difficult today because the president hasn't been doing it from the beginning. And I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning.

Delay has only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and the confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq.

But I'll tell you, we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to be successful in the end.

(APPLAUSE) Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that -- claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. This is the public statement to America.

KERRY: But two weeks ago he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. "Iraq," he said, "now has 95,000 trained security forces."

Well, guess what, America? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth.

For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained by the administration's own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one -- not one has completed a 24-week field training program.

Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?

The president should urgently expand the security forces' training program inside and outside of Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double the classroom training time, require the follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries.

And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers and start behaving like we really are at war.

(APPLAUSE)

Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people, all of which, may I say, should have been in the plan and immediately launched with such a ferocity that there was no doubt about America's commitment or capacity in the very first moments afterwards. But they didn't plan.

He ignored his own State Department's plan, he discarded it. Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise the spending priorities in Iraq. It took them 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.

(APPLAUSE)

One year ago, this administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we have to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability, and now we're paying the price for not doing that.

KERRY: Now the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high-visibility, quick-impact projects, cut through the red tape, make it happen.

He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers instead of big corporations like Halliburton.

(APPLAUSE)

In fact, he should stop paying companies under fraud investigation or corruption investigation. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon who are responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

(APPLAUSE)

Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee that the promised election can be held next year. Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly that could write a constitution and yields a viable power-sharing agreement.

Because Iraqis have no experience in holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role, yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials say elections are in grave doubt, because the security situation is so bad, and because not a single country has yet offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission.

KERRY: The U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff in Iraq that it needs to get the job done, and whole communities are even inaccessible to the delivery of ballots or participation in an election.

The president needs to tell the truth. The president needs to deal with reality, and he should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force.

Now, this is not going to be easy. I understand that. Again, I repeat, every month that's gone by, every offer of help spurned, every alternative not taken for these past months has made this more difficult and those were this president's choices. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq ought to still be prepared to help the United Nations hold an election.

We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S. forces will end up bearing that burden alone.

If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and to train the Iraqis to provide their own security and to develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold elections next year, if all of that happened, we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring our troops home within the next four years.

That can achieved.

(APPLAUSE)

This is what has to be done. This is what I would do if I were president today. But we can't afford to wait until January and I can't tell you what I will find in Iraq on January 20th.

President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.

The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear. We must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should have always been bearing the burden.

KERRY: We must effectively train Iraqis because they have to be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction because that's essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it's up to them to run their own country.

That's the right way to get the job done. It always was the right way to get the job done to minimize the risk to American troops and the cost to American taxpayers. And it is the right way to get our troops home.

On May 1st of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now- infamous banner that read "Mission accomplished." He declared to the American people that, "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come. The president misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective -- a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government -- far harder to achieve than it ever should have been.

(APPLAUSE)

In Iraq, this administration's record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment, presidential judgment, of historic proportions.

At every critical juncture in Iraq and in the war on terrorism, the president has made the wrong choice.

I have a plan to make America stronger.

The president often says that in a post-9/11 world we can't hesitate to act. I agree. But we should not act just for the sake of acting.

KERRY: I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly.

(APPLAUSE)

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do and I have all along.

George Bush has not told the truth to the American people about why we went to war and how the war is going. I have and I will continue to do so.

I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war on terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror that actually makes America safer.

Today, because of George Bush's policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans; just ask anyone who travels.

If you share my conviction that we cannot go on as we are, that we can make America stronger and safer than it is, then November 2nd is your chance to speak and to be heard.

It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.

(APPLAUSE)

I am convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start, move more effectively to accomplish our goals.

Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, for America's sake, we have to get this right. We have to do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

Thank you, God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

KAGAN: We've been listening to Senator John Kerry. He's speaking today at NYU, New York University, making his speech about Iraq. Very critical of President Bush and his policy on Iraq.

The senator today saying things like that he believes the war in Iraq was a diversion from America's war on terror and the battle against what he believes is America's greatest enemy. He said, "Invading Iraq did not attack a crisis, it created a crisis." And he says, "There were fundamental errors in judgment during and after the war, colossal failures in judgment from the Bush administration."

We will be hearing from President Bush later today. More on that in just a second. Also, President Bush speaking tomorrow in New York City at the United Nations.

For reaction, though, to Senator Kerry's speech, let's turn to Danielle Pletka. She is with the American Enterprise Institute, also an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and she joins us from Washington, D.C.

Danielle, good morning. Thanks for being with us.

DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Good morning.

KAGAN: Some very strong fighting words from Senator Kerry this morning. I imagine you might disagree with a few of the points that he made.

PLETKA: Well, I did disagree with a lot that Senator Kerry had to say, but my main sentiment was -- was really disappointment in the politics of despair and of hopelessness that he seems to have embraced in the last couple of weeks, this retelling of the casualty counts, almost reveling in the numbers month to month to month. That's not a good campaign message. That's not the kind of leadership I want to see. And I really felt awful as I watched it, as I imagine a lot of people did.

KAGAN: All right. Well, instead of just going to the tone and whether you liked that, let's talk about some of the points that he made. So let's go on to some of the facts here.

He says that he believes the decision to go to war in Iraq was a diversion from America's battle on terror. Do you agree with that or disagree?

PLETKA: Well, first of all, I have to point out that Senator Kerry disagrees with that. Just a -- just a month ago, Senator Kerry said, "Knowing now what I know, I would still have gone to war in Iraq." He seemed today to say something different.

That is his tenth position on whether he would have gone to war. In addition, I think he made very clear that he believes that America would be safer if Saddam Hussein was still in power. He said almost exactly that.

Now, if that's his position, I think that's fine. I think he needs to make it clear. But again, I want to say...

KAGAN: Danielle, let me just jump in a second. With no disrespect, if you can hang on a second, we have to get a break in here.

PLETKA: Sure.

KAGAN: If you can just stay with me, I'll give you some more time after this.

PLETKA: Absolutely. Thank you.

KAGAN: We'll take a break. We'll be back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: All right. Let's bring back in Danielle Pletka with the American Enterprise Institute, also an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Danielle, my apologies. Sometimes the TV hour just kind of breaks up in that way.

So, once again, we are talking about the speech we just heard from Senator John Kerry, very critical on George Bush's choices about -- his choice to go to war in Iraq.

PLETKA: Well, as I said before the break, I think the problem with Senator Kerry is that he can't decide how he feels about Iraq. He has said that he would have gone to war knowing what he knows now. In this speech, he seemed to indicate he wouldn't have gone to war. I'm not quite sure what he thinks about it.

He also laid out a series of steps that he would take. I do think that it's important that he puts flesh on some of his ideas. But he really didn't lay out anything that the president isn't already doing.

All he seemed to imply that he was going to do the things the president is doing, but he would do them differently. That's not a policy.

KAGAN: From this Democratic presidential contender, it's not surprising that you would hear critiques of President Bush's choices. But we're also hearing some critiques over the weekend from two key Republican senators, Senator John McCain and Senator Chuck Hagel. Is there concern within the Republican Party that there isn't a cohesive unit in supporting President Bush?

PLETKA: No. I think that the Republican Party, like the nation, is extraordinarily diverse. Senators who were on these committees have serious concerns about how money is spent. They have concerns about the fact that there is trouble in Iraq. And they have a right to speak out.

Unfortunately, there's only one commander in chief. And these decisions in wartime are extraordinarily difficult. I respect Senator Lugar and Senator Hagel's right to speak out on these issues, but with all that respect, I think that they don't understand the gravity of the difficulties in making the right decision every single day.

KAGAN: Danielle Pletka. Danielle, thanks for being patient and for waiting with us, listening to the whole speech and putting up with the commercial break there.

PLETKA: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: Thank you for that.

And as we mentioned, President Bush, we're going to hear from him twice. Later today, twice, he'll be in Derry, New Hampshire. He's making a campaign stop there. You'll see that live here on CNN.

Also, as I mentioned, the president speaking before the United Nations tomorrow, just about this time. About 23 hours from now, you're going to see that speech live here on CNN.

Let's bring in our Kelly Wallace now. She has been on the Kerry campaign, among her many, many assignments for this network.

Kelly, listening to Senator Kerry's speech, I think people can hear what they want to hear. I think people who wanted to hear a strong critique of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq will like that, but people who are critical of George Bush, as we just heard from Danielle Pletka, will also hear grounds for saying that he flip- flops and he changes his mind.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a great point you make, Daryn. What it is key that John Kerry wanted to do, kind of getting a sense from his advisers, is he wanted to do two things.

He has been criticized certainly from the Bush-Cheney campaign for his positions on the war. So he wanted to draw a final distinction here. He might have given the president the authority for an Iraqi war resolution, but he's saying, if he were commander in chief, he would have handled the whole thing 100 percent differently.

And he's also trying to do something else, Daryn. Democrats believe as more and more attention is on events in the ground, more than 1,000 Americans killed, that national intelligence estimate, which had a very bleak outlook for Iraq, best case scenario, tenuous stability, worst case, civil war. They think as more Americans focus on events on the ground that John Kerry kind of takes the upper hand here in terms of what he would do differently versus the president.

It's obviously a strategy that's going to come with criticism. But right now, they're hoping he makes gains when it coulds to events on the ground.

KAGAN: Pretty close to the top of the speech, Kelly, we heard the senator calling for a series of debates. It looks like that debate schedule is coming together finally. And the first one might come as early as the end of the month.

WALLACE: It is. It appears, you know, the first once scheduled, tentatively was scheduled weeks ago for September 30. Negotiations going on between the campaigns.

A Democratic source telling our Candy Crowley that it looks like there is a tentative agreement for three debates. Obviously, the Democrats are hoping this is an opportunity for Senator Kerry to try and sort of go up face to face with President Bush and draw some distinctions.

But, Daryn, you know, you just look at the polls over the weekend, "The New York Times"/CBS News poll, and you look at certain things such as this question, when people are asked, is the candidate talking about what he would do as president or attacking the other person? John Kerry, 54 percent of the voters feel he's spending too much time attacking President Bush and not enough explaining what he would do. So he seems to have to make up a lot of ground in those polls, in terms of laying out the case that he would make as commander in chief.

KAGAN: And that clock is ticking. Six weeks from tomorrow, Americans head to the polls.

Kelly, thank you. Kelly Wallace in New York City.

We have a lot of news still to get to in the next half hour. We're going to do that. First, though, a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired September 20, 2004 - 10:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Back here live to Capitol Hill. This hour, a hearing is under way on President Bush's choice to become the next director of the CIA. This time it's the Senate Select Intelligence Committee holding its second hearing on Porter Goss. Democrats have questioned whether the Republican Congressman can be independent and objective.
President Bush will appear before the United Nations tomorrow. He will face an audience that is often critical, and maybe even more skeptical given the contentious presidential election. Mr. Bush is expected to discuss both the military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his administration's global fight against AIDS, illiteracy and hunger.

Our senior U.N. correspondent Richard Roth joins us for a preview of that.

Richard, good morning.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

President Bush will be here tomorrow. Usually it's a Monday during these special high-level general assembly debate weeks. But there will be dozens of presidents, prime ministers already here for a meeting on development and poverty. President Bush two years ago demanded that the U.N. take action against Iraq, or else, and it's that or else that irritates a lot of countries still, and they're not willing to participate in Iraq to help out the United States with economic reconstruction and troops.

But what's riling the U.S. now are puzzling comments last week by Secretary-General Kofi Annan who said in effect that the war was illegal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD BOUCHER, STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN: While we respect his views, I think we've also made clear before that we don't agree. The war in Iraq had a sound legal...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: All right, well, that's State Department spokesman Richard Boucher who said that Kofi Annan's statements last week that the war was illegal was wrong, the U.S. believing it had the legitimacy under 16 existing Security Council resolutions, that it had the authority to go in under resolutions threatening -- quote -- "serious consequences."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan was grilled by a BBC reporter who, in effect, put the word "illegal" in Annan's mouth, and eventually Annan said, if you wish, yes, it is illegal under the charter. Annan thinks the Security Council should have given its final blessing -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Richard Roth at the United Nations. Thank you. And CNN will have live coverage of President Bush's address to the U.N. General Assembly. That is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.

So how does President Bush rate with a broader international audience? Would voters worldwide keep him in power or elect his rival John Kerry?

Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider takes an international sampling.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POL. ANALYST: It's being called a world election in which the world has no vote. Do we know how the rest of the world would vote? Some Americans claim they do.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have heard from people who are leaders elsewhere in the world, who don't appreciate the Bush administration approach and would love to see a change in the leadership of the United States.

SCHNEIDER: Maybe they're responding to opinion in their own countries.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're are vast numbers of people, especially in Europe, that are looking at the United States population and cannot understand how they would want to re-elect George W. Bush. It is a simple fact.

SCHNEIDER: Is it? There's evidence it is. Over the summer, University of Maryland researchers asked citizens of 35 countries how they would vote between Bush and Kerry. The result, 30 of the 35, voted for Kerry. Kerry won all but one European country poll.

A Bush campaign official once said Kerry looks French. Apparently the French were impressed. They gave Kerry a 59-point lead. Only 5 percent of the French voted for bush.

What about the Bush administration's closest ally, Britain? Not even close. The British favored Kerry by over 30 points.

The exception? Poland, which Bush carried by a narrow margin.

How about America's neighbors? Canadians went for Kerry by 45 points. Mexicans by 20. In Asia, Kerry carried China, Japan and Indonesia.

Only the Philippines, a former American colony fighting its own Muslim insurrection, went for bush.

In India and Thailand, the race was close. Swing countries?

The overwhelming hostility to President Bush in the world does have consequences for those foreign leaders Kerry was talking about.

QUEST: Look at the damage to those politicians who have been associated with Bush, from Agnar in Spain to Berlusconi in Italy to John Howard now running neck and neck in his own re-election in Australia. With an economy that's booming, he should be walking in. And now look at Tony Blair. Every leader that has stood side by side with George Bush is feeling the electorate's wrath.

SCHNEIDER (on camera): Tony Blair's Labor government faces re- election, possibly as early as next spring. His people are reported to have informed the White House that Blair needs to keep his distance from Bush so as not to endanger his own survival.

Bill Schneider, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And we invite you to watch CNN tonight for "PAULA ZAHN NOW," a closer look at primetime politics, a roundtable discussion with our international reporters. We'll take a point-by-point look at Bush versus Kerry, war and politics. That's at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific.

Live now to New York City, here is Senator John Kerry speaking at NYU. After he gets through these housekeeping items, we expect him to make statements on Iraq.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

KERRY: I am really honored to be here at New York University, at NYU Wagner, one of the great urban universities in America. Not just in New York, but in the world. You've set a high standard, you always set a high standard for global dialogue, as Ellen (ph) mentioned a moment ago. And I intend to live up to that tradition here today.

This election is about choices. The most important choices a president makes are about protecting America, at home and around the world. A president's first obligation is to make America safer, stronger and truer to our ideals.

(APPLAUSE)

Only a few blocks from here, three years ago, the events of September 11th remind every American of that obligation. That day brought to our shores the defining struggle of our times: the struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism. And it made clear that our most important task is to fight and to win the war on terrorism.

With us today is a remarkable group of women who lost loved ones on September 11th, and whose support I am honored to have. Not only did they suffer unbearable loss, but they helped us as a nation to learn the lessons of that terrible time by insisting on the creation of the 9/11 Commission.

(APPLAUSE)

I ask them to stand, and I thank them on behalf of our country, and I pledge to them, and to you, that I will implement the 9/11 recommendations. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

In fighting the war on terrorism my principles are straightforward. The terrorists are beyond reason. We must destroy them. As president I will do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat our enemies.

But billions of people around the world, yearning for a better life, are open to America's ideals. We must reach them.

(APPLAUSE)

To win, America must be strong and America must be smart.

The greatest threat that we face is the possibility of Al Qaida or other terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons. To prevent that from happening we have to call on the totality of America's strength: strong alliances to help us stop the world's most lethal weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands; a powerful military, transformed to meet the threats of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction; and all of America's power -- our diplomacy, our intelligence system, our economic power, our appeal to the values, the values of Americans, and to connect them to the values of other people around the world -- each of which is critical to making America more secure and to preventing a new generation of terrorists from emerging.

KERRY: National security is a central issue in this campaign.

We owe it to the American people to have a real debate about the choices President Bush has made, and the choices I would make and have made, to fight and win the war on terror.

That means that we must have a great and honest debate on Iraq.

(APPLAUSE)

The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy.

(APPLAUSE)

Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and from our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists.

Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight.

This month, we passed a cruel milestone: more than 1,000 Americans lost in Iraq. Their sacrifice reminds us that Iraq remains overwhelmingly an American burden. Nearly 90 percent of the troops and nearly 90 percent of the casualties are American.

Despite the president's claims, this is not a grand coalition.

Our troops have served with extraordinary bravery and skill and resolve. Their service humbles all of us. I visited with some of them in the hospitals and I am stunned by their commitment, by their sense of duty, their patriotism. When I speak to them, when I look into the eyes of their families, I know this: We owe them the truth about what we have asked them to do and what is still to be done.

KERRY: That is an American value.

(APPLAUSE)

Would you all join me? My wife Teresa has made it through the traffic, and I'm delighted that she is here. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

In June, the president declared, "The Iraqi people have their country back." And just last week he told us, "This country is headed toward democracy; freedom is on the march." But the administration's own official intelligence estimate, given to the president last July, tells a very different story.

According to press reports, the intelligence estimate totally contradicts what the president is saying to the American people and so do the facts on the ground.

Security is deteriorating for us and for the Iraqis. Forty-two Americans died in Iraq in June, the month before the handover. But 54 died in July, 66 in August and already 54 halfway through September. And more than 1,100 Americans were wounded in August; more than in any other month since the invasion.

We are fighting a growing insurgency in an ever-widening war zone. In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times; a 400 percent increase.

Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra and parts of Iraq are now no-go zones, breeding grounds for terrorists, who are free to plot and to launch attacks against our soldiers.

The radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is accused of complicity in the murder of Americans, holds more sway in suburbs of Baghdad than the prime minister.

Violence against Iraqis, from bombings to kidnappings to intimidation, is on the rise.

Basic living conditions are also deteriorating. KERRY: Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours today: unprecedented. Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school. Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 to toss a grenade at a passing U.S. convoy.

Yes, there has been some progress. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of our soldiers and civilians in Iraq, schools, shops and hospitals have been opened in certain places. In parts of Iraq, normalcy actually prevails.

But most Iraqis have lost faith in our ability to be able to deliver meaningful improvements to their lives. So they're sitting on the fence, instead of siding with us against the insurgents.

That is the truth, the truth that the commander in chief owes to our troops and to the American people.

Now, I will say to you, it is never easy to discuss what has gone wrong while our troops are in constant danger. But it is essential if you want to correct the course and do what's right for those troops, instead of repeating the same old mistakes over and over again.

I know this dilemma firsthand. I saw firsthand what happens when pride or arrogance take over from rational decision-making. And after serving in a war, I returned home to offer my own personal views of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it to those risking their lives to speak truth to power. And we still do.

(APPLAUSE)

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in Hell. But that was not -- that was not, in and of itself, a reason to go to war.

(APPLAUSE)

The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, the president has said that he miscalculated in Iraq, and that it was a catastrophic success.

KERRY: In fact, the president has made a series of catastrophic decisions. From the beginning in Iraq, at every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and he has led us in the wrong direction.

(APPLAUSE)

The first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war, and he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

By one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.

(APPLAUSE)

His two main rationales, weapons of mass destruction and the Al Qaida-September 11th connection, have both been proved false by the president's own weapons inspectors and by the 9/11 Commission.

And just last week, Secretary of State Powell acknowledged those facts. Only Vice President Cheney still insists that the Earth is flat.

(APPLAUSE)

The president also failed to level with the American people about what it would take to prevail in Iraq. He didn't tell us that well over 100,000 troops would be needed for years, not months. He didn't tell us that he wouldn't take the time to assemble a genuine, broad, strong coalition of allies. He didn't tell us that the cost would exceed $200 billion. He didn't tell us that even after paying such a heavy price, success was far from assured.

And America will pay an even heavier price for the president's lack of candor.

At home, the American people are less likely to trust this administration if it needs to summon their support to meet real and pressing threats to our security.

KERRY: Abroad, other countries will be reluctant to follow America when we seek to rally them against a common menace, as they are today. Our credibility in the world has plummeted.

In the dark days of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to Europe to build support. Acheson explained the situation to French President de Gaulle. Then he offered to show him highly classified satellite photos as proof. De Gaulle waved him away, saying, "The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

How many world leaders have that same trust in America's president today? This president's failure to tell the truth to us and to the world before the war has been exceeded by fundamental errors of judgment during and after the war.

The president now admits to miscalculations in Iraq. Miscalculations: This is one of the greatest underestimates in recent American history.

(APPLAUSE)

His miscalculations were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment, and judgment is what we look for a president.

(APPLAUSE)

And this is all the more stunning, because we're not talking about 20/20 hindsight, we're not talking about Monday morning quarterbacking. Before the war, before he chose to go to war, bipartisan congressional hearings, major outside studies and even some in his own administration, predicted virtually every problem that we face in Iraq today.

KERRY: This president was in denial. He hitched his wagon to the ideologues who surround him, filtering out those who disagreed, including leaders of his own party and the uniformed military.

The result is a long litany of misjudgments with terrible and real consequences.

The administration told us we would be greeted as liberators; they were wrong. They told us not to worry about the looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure; they were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots; they were tragically wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy; they were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country, and a police force and an army to secure it; they were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently overpromised and underperformed. And this policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, by an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence.

(APPLAUSE)

And the president has held no one accountable, including himself.

In fact, the only officials -- the only officials who've lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

KERRY: General Shinseki said it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq. He was retired.

Economic adviser Larry Lindsey said it would cost as much as $200 billion. Pretty good calculation. He was fired.

After the successful entry into Baghdad, George Bush was offered help from the U.N., and he rejected it, stiff-armed them, decided to go it alone. He even prohibited nations from participating in reconstruction efforts because they weren't part of the original coalition, pushing reluctant countries even further away. And as we continue to fight this war almost alone, it is hard to estimate how costly that arrogant decision really was.

Can anyone seriously say this president has handled Iraq in a way that makes America stronger in the war on terrorism?

AUDIENCE: No!

KERRY: By any measure, by any measure, the answer is no.

Nuclear dangers have mounted across the globe. The international terrorist club has expanded. Radicalism in the Middle East is on the rise. We have divided our friends and united our enemies. And our standing in the world is at an all-time low.

Think about it for a minute. Consider where we were and where we are.

After the events of September 11th, we had an opportunity to bring our country and the world together in a legitimate struggle against terrorists. On September 12th, headlines and newspapers abroad declared that, "We are all Americans now."

But through his policy in Iraq, the president squandered that moment and, rather than isolating the terrorists, left America isolated from the world.

(APPLAUSE)

We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and posed no imminent threat to our security.

KERRY: It had not, as the vice president claimed, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

The president's policy in Iraq took our attention and our resources away from other more serious threats to America, threats like North Korea, which actually has weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear arsenal, and is building more right now under this president's watch; the emerging nuclear danger of Iran; the tons and kilotons of unsecured chemical and nuclear weapons in Russia; and the increasing instability in Afghanistan.

Today, warlords again control much of that country, the Taliban is regrouping, opium production is at an all-time high and the Al Qaida leadership still plots and plans, not only there, but in 60 other nations.

Instead of using U.S. forces, we relied on warlords, who one week earlier had been fighting on the other side, to go up in the mountains to capture Osama bin Laden when he was cornered. He slipped away.

We then diverted our focus and our forces from the hunt for those who were responsible for September 11th in order to invade Iraq.

We know now that Iraq played no part. We knew then on September 11th. And it had no operational ties to Al Qaida.

The president's policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem that he said he was trying to prevent.

Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before their war; now it is, and they are operating against our troops.

Iraq is becoming a sanctuary for a new generation of terrorists who could someday hit the United States of America.

And we know that while Iraq was a source of friction, it was not previously a source of serious disagreement with our allies in Europe and countries in the Muslim world.

The president's policy in Iraq divided our oldest alliance and sent our standing in the Muslim world into freefall.

Three years after 9/11, even in many moderate Muslim countries, like Jordan, Morocco and Turkey, Osama bin Laden is more popular than the United States of America.

KERRY: Let me put it plainly: The president's policy in Iraq has not strengthened our national security, it has weakened it.

(APPLAUSE)

Two years ago, Congress was right to give the president the authority to use force to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This president, any president, would have needed that threat of force to act effectively. This president misused that authority.

(APPLAUSE)

The power entrusted to the president purposefully gave him a strong hand to play in the international community. The idea was simple: We would get the weapons inspectors back in to verify whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we would convince the world to speak with one voice to Saddam, disarm or be disarmed.

A month before the war, President Bush told the nation, "If we have to act, we will take every precaution that is possible. We will plan carefully. We will act with the full power of the United States military. We will act with allies at our side and we will prevail."

KERRY: He said that military action was not unavoidable.

Instead, the president rushed to war, without letting the weapons inspectors finish their work. He went purposefully, by choice, without a broad and deep coalition of allies. He acted by choice, without making sure that our troops even had enough body armor. And he plunged ahead by choice, without understanding or preparing for the consequences of postwar. None of which I would have done.

Yet today, President Bush tells us that he would do everything all over again the same way.

How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we know there was no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaida, the United States should have invaded Iraq?

My answer: resoundingly, no, because a commander in chief's first responsibility is to make a wise and responsible decision to keep America safe.

(APPLAUSE)

Now the president is looking for a reason, a new reason to hang his hat on -- it's the capability to acquire weapons.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, that was not the reason given to the nation, that was not the reason the Congress voted on. That is not a reason today; it is an excuse.

(APPLAUSE)

KERRY: Thirty-five to 40 countries have greater capability to build a nuclear bomb than Iraq did in 2003. Is President Bush saying we should invade all of them?

I would have personally concentrated our power and resources on defeating global terrorism and capturing Osama bin Laden.

(APPLAUSE)

I would have tightened the noose and continued to pressure and isolate Saddam Hussein -- who was weak and getting weaker -- so that he would pose no threat to the region or to America.

The president's insistence that he would do the same thing all over again in Iraq is a clear warning for the future. And it makes the choice in this election clear: more of the same with President Bush or a new, smarter direction with John Kerry that makes our troops and America safer. That's the choice.

(APPLAUSE)

It is time, at long last, to ask the questions and insist on the answers from the commander in chief about his serious misjudgments and what they tell us about his administration and the president himself.

KERRY: If George W. Bush is reelected, he will cling to the same failed policies in Iraq and he will repeat somewhere else the same reckless mistakes that have made America less secure than we can or should be.

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands. But we cannot just throw up our hands, we cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America's security for years to come.

All across this country, people ask me and others, what we should do now every stop of the way. From the first time I spoke about this in the Senate, I have set out a specific set of recommendations from day one, from the first debate until this moment. I have set out specific steps of how we should not and how we should proceed. But over and over, when this administration has been presented with a reasonable alternative, they have rejected it and gone their own way. This is stubborn incompetence.

Five months ago in Fulton, Missouri, I said that the president was close to his last chance to get it right. Every day this president makes it more difficult to deal with Iraq, harder than it was five months ago, harder than it was a year ago, a year and a half ago.

It's time to recognize what is and what is not happening in Iraq today and we must act with urgency.

Just this weekend, a leading Republican, Chuck Hagel, said that, "We're in deep trouble in Iraq. It doesn't add up to a pretty picture," he said, "and we're going to have to look at a recalibration of our policy."

Republican leaders like Dick Lugar and John McCain have offered similar assessments.

We need to turn the page and make a fresh start in Iraq.

First, the president has to get the promised international support so our men and women in uniform don't have to go it alone.

KERRY: It is late. I acknowledge that. But the president has to respond by moving this week to gain and regain international support.

Last spring, after too many months of delay, after reluctance to take the advice of so many of us, the president finally went back to the U.N., and it passed Resolution 1546. It was the right thing to do, but it was late.

That resolution calls on U.N. members to help in Iraq by providing troops, trainers for Iraq's security forces and a special brigade to protect the U.N. mission, and more financial assistance and real debt relief.

But guess what? Three months later, not a single country has answered that call, and the president acts as if it doesn't matter.

And of the 13 billion that was previously pledged to Iraq by other countries, only $1.2 billion has been delivered.

The president should convene a summit meeting of the world's major powers and of Iraq's neighbors, this week, in New York, where many leaders will attend the U.N. General Assembly, and he should insist that they make good on the U.N. resolution. He should offer potential troop contributors specific but critical roles in training Iraqi security personnel and in securing Iraqi borders. He should give other countries a stake in Iraq's future by encouraging them to help develop Iraq's oil resources and by letting them bid on contracts instead of locking them out of the reconstruction process.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, is this more difficult today? You bet it is. It's more difficult today because the president hasn't been doing it from the beginning. And I and others have repeatedly recommended this from the very beginning.

Delay has only made it harder. After insulting allies and shredding alliances, this president may not have the trust and the confidence to bring others to our side in Iraq.

But I'll tell you, we cannot hope to succeed unless we rebuild and lead strong alliances so that other nations share the burden with us. That is the only way to be successful in the end.

(APPLAUSE) Second, the president must get serious about training Iraqi security forces.

Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that -- claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. This is the public statement to America.

KERRY: But two weeks ago he admitted that claim was exaggerated by more than 50 percent. "Iraq," he said, "now has 95,000 trained security forces."

Well, guess what, America? Neither number bears any relationship to the truth.

For example, just 5,000 Iraqi soldiers have been fully trained by the administration's own minimal standards. And of the 35,000 police now in uniform, not one -- not one has completed a 24-week field training program.

Is it any wonder that Iraqi security forces can't stop the insurgency or provide basic law and order?

The president should urgently expand the security forces' training program inside and outside of Iraq. He should strengthen the vetting of recruits, double the classroom training time, require the follow-on field training. He should recruit thousands of qualified trainers from our allies, especially those who have no troops in Iraq. He should press our NATO allies to open training centers in their countries.

And he should stop misleading the American people with phony, inflated numbers and start behaving like we really are at war.

(APPLAUSE)

Third, the president must carry out a reconstruction plan that finally brings tangible benefits to the Iraqi people, all of which, may I say, should have been in the plan and immediately launched with such a ferocity that there was no doubt about America's commitment or capacity in the very first moments afterwards. But they didn't plan.

He ignored his own State Department's plan, he discarded it. Last week, the administration admitted that its plan was a failure when it asked Congress for permission to radically revise the spending priorities in Iraq. It took them 17 months for them to understand that security is a priority, 17 months to figure out that boosting oil production is critical, 17 months to conclude that an Iraqi with a job is less likely to shoot at our soldiers.

(APPLAUSE)

One year ago, this administration asked for and received $18 billion to help the Iraqis and relieve the conditions that contribute to the insurgency. Today, less than $1 billion of those funds have actually been spent. I said at the time that we have to rethink our policies and set standards of accountability, and now we're paying the price for not doing that.

KERRY: Now the president should look at the whole reconstruction package, draw up a list of high-visibility, quick-impact projects, cut through the red tape, make it happen.

He should use more Iraqi contractors and workers instead of big corporations like Halliburton.

(APPLAUSE)

In fact, he should stop paying companies under fraud investigation or corruption investigation. And he should fire the civilians in the Pentagon who are responsible for mismanaging the reconstruction effort.

(APPLAUSE)

Fourth, the president must take immediate, urgent, essential steps to guarantee that the promised election can be held next year. Credible elections are key to producing an Iraqi government that enjoys the support of the Iraqi people and an assembly that could write a constitution and yields a viable power-sharing agreement.

Because Iraqis have no experience in holding free and fair elections, the president agreed six months ago that the U.N. must play a central role, yet today, just four months before Iraqis are supposed to go to the polls, the U.N. secretary general and administration officials say elections are in grave doubt, because the security situation is so bad, and because not a single country has yet offered troops to protect the U.N. elections mission.

KERRY: The U.N. has less than 25 percent of the staff in Iraq that it needs to get the job done, and whole communities are even inaccessible to the delivery of ballots or participation in an election.

The president needs to tell the truth. The president needs to deal with reality, and he should recruit troops from our friends and allies for a U.N. protection force.

Now, this is not going to be easy. I understand that. Again, I repeat, every month that's gone by, every offer of help spurned, every alternative not taken for these past months has made this more difficult and those were this president's choices. But even countries that refused to put boots on the ground in Iraq ought to still be prepared to help the United Nations hold an election.

We should also intensify the training of Iraqis to manage and guard the polling places that need to be opened. Otherwise, U.S. forces will end up bearing that burden alone.

If the president would move in this direction, if he would bring in more help from other countries to provide resources and to train the Iraqis to provide their own security and to develop a reconstruction plan that brings real benefits to the Iraqi people, and take the steps necessary to hold elections next year, if all of that happened, we could begin to withdraw U.S. forces starting next summer and realistically aim to bring our troops home within the next four years.

That can achieved.

(APPLAUSE)

This is what has to be done. This is what I would do if I were president today. But we can't afford to wait until January and I can't tell you what I will find in Iraq on January 20th.

President Bush owes it to the American people to tell the truth and put Iraq on the right track. Even more, he owes it to our troops and their families whose sacrifice is a testament to the best of America.

The principles that should guide American policy in Iraq now and in the future are clear. We must make Iraq the world's responsibility, because the world has a stake in the outcome and others should have always been bearing the burden.

KERRY: We must effectively train Iraqis because they have to be responsible for their own security. We must move forward with reconstruction because that's essential to stop the spread of terror. And we must help Iraqis achieve a viable government, because it's up to them to run their own country.

That's the right way to get the job done. It always was the right way to get the job done to minimize the risk to American troops and the cost to American taxpayers. And it is the right way to get our troops home.

On May 1st of last year, President Bush stood in front of a now- infamous banner that read "Mission accomplished." He declared to the American people that, "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

In fact, the worst part of the war was just beginning, with the greatest number of American casualties still to come. The president misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking and he has made the achievement of our objective -- a stable Iraq, secure within its borders, with a representative government -- far harder to achieve than it ever should have been.

(APPLAUSE)

In Iraq, this administration's record is filled with bad predictions, inaccurate cost estimates, deceptive statements and errors of judgment, presidential judgment, of historic proportions.

At every critical juncture in Iraq and in the war on terrorism, the president has made the wrong choice.

I have a plan to make America stronger.

The president often says that in a post-9/11 world we can't hesitate to act. I agree. But we should not act just for the sake of acting.

KERRY: I believe we have to act wisely and responsibly.

(APPLAUSE)

George Bush has no strategy for Iraq. I do and I have all along.

George Bush has not told the truth to the American people about why we went to war and how the war is going. I have and I will continue to do so.

I believe the invasion of Iraq has made us less secure and weaker in the war on terrorism. I have a plan to fight a smarter, more effective war on terror that actually makes America safer.

Today, because of George Bush's policy in Iraq, the world is a more dangerous place for America and Americans; just ask anyone who travels.

If you share my conviction that we cannot go on as we are, that we can make America stronger and safer than it is, then November 2nd is your chance to speak and to be heard.

It is not a question of staying the course, but of changing the course.

(APPLAUSE)

I am convinced that with the right leadership, we can create a fresh start, move more effectively to accomplish our goals.

Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, for America's sake, we have to get this right. We have to do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

Thank you, God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you.

KAGAN: We've been listening to Senator John Kerry. He's speaking today at NYU, New York University, making his speech about Iraq. Very critical of President Bush and his policy on Iraq.

The senator today saying things like that he believes the war in Iraq was a diversion from America's war on terror and the battle against what he believes is America's greatest enemy. He said, "Invading Iraq did not attack a crisis, it created a crisis." And he says, "There were fundamental errors in judgment during and after the war, colossal failures in judgment from the Bush administration."

We will be hearing from President Bush later today. More on that in just a second. Also, President Bush speaking tomorrow in New York City at the United Nations.

For reaction, though, to Senator Kerry's speech, let's turn to Danielle Pletka. She is with the American Enterprise Institute, also an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and she joins us from Washington, D.C.

Danielle, good morning. Thanks for being with us.

DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Good morning.

KAGAN: Some very strong fighting words from Senator Kerry this morning. I imagine you might disagree with a few of the points that he made.

PLETKA: Well, I did disagree with a lot that Senator Kerry had to say, but my main sentiment was -- was really disappointment in the politics of despair and of hopelessness that he seems to have embraced in the last couple of weeks, this retelling of the casualty counts, almost reveling in the numbers month to month to month. That's not a good campaign message. That's not the kind of leadership I want to see. And I really felt awful as I watched it, as I imagine a lot of people did.

KAGAN: All right. Well, instead of just going to the tone and whether you liked that, let's talk about some of the points that he made. So let's go on to some of the facts here.

He says that he believes the decision to go to war in Iraq was a diversion from America's battle on terror. Do you agree with that or disagree?

PLETKA: Well, first of all, I have to point out that Senator Kerry disagrees with that. Just a -- just a month ago, Senator Kerry said, "Knowing now what I know, I would still have gone to war in Iraq." He seemed today to say something different.

That is his tenth position on whether he would have gone to war. In addition, I think he made very clear that he believes that America would be safer if Saddam Hussein was still in power. He said almost exactly that.

Now, if that's his position, I think that's fine. I think he needs to make it clear. But again, I want to say...

KAGAN: Danielle, let me just jump in a second. With no disrespect, if you can hang on a second, we have to get a break in here.

PLETKA: Sure.

KAGAN: If you can just stay with me, I'll give you some more time after this.

PLETKA: Absolutely. Thank you.

KAGAN: We'll take a break. We'll be back right after this.

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KAGAN: All right. Let's bring back in Danielle Pletka with the American Enterprise Institute, also an adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Danielle, my apologies. Sometimes the TV hour just kind of breaks up in that way.

So, once again, we are talking about the speech we just heard from Senator John Kerry, very critical on George Bush's choices about -- his choice to go to war in Iraq.

PLETKA: Well, as I said before the break, I think the problem with Senator Kerry is that he can't decide how he feels about Iraq. He has said that he would have gone to war knowing what he knows now. In this speech, he seemed to indicate he wouldn't have gone to war. I'm not quite sure what he thinks about it.

He also laid out a series of steps that he would take. I do think that it's important that he puts flesh on some of his ideas. But he really didn't lay out anything that the president isn't already doing.

All he seemed to imply that he was going to do the things the president is doing, but he would do them differently. That's not a policy.

KAGAN: From this Democratic presidential contender, it's not surprising that you would hear critiques of President Bush's choices. But we're also hearing some critiques over the weekend from two key Republican senators, Senator John McCain and Senator Chuck Hagel. Is there concern within the Republican Party that there isn't a cohesive unit in supporting President Bush?

PLETKA: No. I think that the Republican Party, like the nation, is extraordinarily diverse. Senators who were on these committees have serious concerns about how money is spent. They have concerns about the fact that there is trouble in Iraq. And they have a right to speak out.

Unfortunately, there's only one commander in chief. And these decisions in wartime are extraordinarily difficult. I respect Senator Lugar and Senator Hagel's right to speak out on these issues, but with all that respect, I think that they don't understand the gravity of the difficulties in making the right decision every single day.

KAGAN: Danielle Pletka. Danielle, thanks for being patient and for waiting with us, listening to the whole speech and putting up with the commercial break there.

PLETKA: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: Thank you for that.

And as we mentioned, President Bush, we're going to hear from him twice. Later today, twice, he'll be in Derry, New Hampshire. He's making a campaign stop there. You'll see that live here on CNN.

Also, as I mentioned, the president speaking before the United Nations tomorrow, just about this time. About 23 hours from now, you're going to see that speech live here on CNN.

Let's bring in our Kelly Wallace now. She has been on the Kerry campaign, among her many, many assignments for this network.

Kelly, listening to Senator Kerry's speech, I think people can hear what they want to hear. I think people who wanted to hear a strong critique of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq will like that, but people who are critical of George Bush, as we just heard from Danielle Pletka, will also hear grounds for saying that he flip- flops and he changes his mind.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a great point you make, Daryn. What it is key that John Kerry wanted to do, kind of getting a sense from his advisers, is he wanted to do two things.

He has been criticized certainly from the Bush-Cheney campaign for his positions on the war. So he wanted to draw a final distinction here. He might have given the president the authority for an Iraqi war resolution, but he's saying, if he were commander in chief, he would have handled the whole thing 100 percent differently.

And he's also trying to do something else, Daryn. Democrats believe as more and more attention is on events in the ground, more than 1,000 Americans killed, that national intelligence estimate, which had a very bleak outlook for Iraq, best case scenario, tenuous stability, worst case, civil war. They think as more Americans focus on events on the ground that John Kerry kind of takes the upper hand here in terms of what he would do differently versus the president.

It's obviously a strategy that's going to come with criticism. But right now, they're hoping he makes gains when it coulds to events on the ground.

KAGAN: Pretty close to the top of the speech, Kelly, we heard the senator calling for a series of debates. It looks like that debate schedule is coming together finally. And the first one might come as early as the end of the month.

WALLACE: It is. It appears, you know, the first once scheduled, tentatively was scheduled weeks ago for September 30. Negotiations going on between the campaigns.

A Democratic source telling our Candy Crowley that it looks like there is a tentative agreement for three debates. Obviously, the Democrats are hoping this is an opportunity for Senator Kerry to try and sort of go up face to face with President Bush and draw some distinctions.

But, Daryn, you know, you just look at the polls over the weekend, "The New York Times"/CBS News poll, and you look at certain things such as this question, when people are asked, is the candidate talking about what he would do as president or attacking the other person? John Kerry, 54 percent of the voters feel he's spending too much time attacking President Bush and not enough explaining what he would do. So he seems to have to make up a lot of ground in those polls, in terms of laying out the case that he would make as commander in chief.

KAGAN: And that clock is ticking. Six weeks from tomorrow, Americans head to the polls.

Kelly, thank you. Kelly Wallace in New York City.

We have a lot of news still to get to in the next half hour. We're going to do that. First, though, a quick break.

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