President ridicules foe’s ‘wild charges’

LITITZ, Pa. — President Bush yesterday accused Sen. John Kerry of making “wild charges” about missing explosives in Iraq and mocked the Democrat for belatedly expressing concern over weapons stockpiles.

“The senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign-policy adviser admits, quote, ‘We do not know the facts,’” he said at a rally aimed at enlisting Democratic support, with Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia at his side.

“Think about that: The senator is denigrating the actions of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts.”

The broadside came two days after Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, began blaming the president for the disappearance of 380 tons of explosives from an ammunition depot south of Baghdad.

The veracity of the story, which was reported Monday by CBS News and the New York Times, has come under fire from soldiers and journalists who were on the scene and say the explosives were missing before U.S. forces arrived on April 10, 2003.

“Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site,” Mr. Bush said.

The president accused his opponent of “denigrating” U.S. forces by implying they were negligent. The charge was denied by senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart.

“To somehow imply that John Kerry does anything less than fully support our troops is beneath contempt,” Mr. Lockhart said. “The American people deserve better, and next Tuesday, they will get it.”

Mr. Kerry, after the president’s remarks, told an audience in Rochester, Minn., that Mr. Bush was doing a disservice to the military.

“You don’t honor our troops or protect them better by putting them in greater danger than they ought to be,” Mr. Kerry said. “The bottom line is, your administration was warned — you were put on notice, but you didn’t put these explosives on a priority list. You didn’t think it was important.”

But Mr. Bush pointed out that while Mr. Kerry has been unequivocally blaming the White House for the disappearance, the Democrat’s top advisers have been hedging their accusations.

For example, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Jamie Rubin acknowledged on CNN that it was possible that the explosives had been removed before U.S. troops arrived a day after the fall of Baghdad. Richard Holbrooke, widely considered Mr. Kerry’s choice for secretary of state, was similarly noncommittal.

“I don’t know what happened,” Mr. Holbrooke told John Gibson of the Fox News Channel on Tuesday. “I don’t know the truth.”

Yesterday, Mr. Bush pounced on this ambivalence.

“A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief,” Mr. Bush said at the rally.

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