Those close to president urge anti-Kerry questions

NEW YORK -- The White House says its position is clear: President Bush honors John F. Kerry's military service. ''We've never said anything other than very positive things about his time in the military," Vice President Dick Cheney said in a radio interview Tuesday.

But in recent days, some of those closest to the president have kept alive the questions about Kerry's Vietnam service and showed they are particularly willing to go after Kerry for his antiwar activities in 1971.

Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, said that Kerry's antiwar activities tarnished all veterans at the time. Former President George H.W. Bush said the charges of an anti-Kerry veterans group were ''rather compelling." Even Laura Bush, the president's wife, added her voice, telling Time magazine that the anti-Kerry ads were ''not really" unfair, as she noted the ads attacking her husband.

Bush has said he wants all ads by the tax-exempt organizations known as 527 groups, including the anti-Kerry spots by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, taken off the air. Yesterday, the Bush campaign asked a federal court to force the Federal Election Commission to rule on complaints about such groups before the Nov. 2 election.

The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, arranged a conference call yesterday in which several Democratic veterans of the Vietnam War called on Rove to resign for saying that Kerry had tarnished veterans with his 1971 testimony.

That year, Kerry criticized US policy makers and commanders in the Vietnam War and described the testimony of veterans who met in Detroit earlier that year and said they had ''personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."

Kerry's words are being used in a new ad by the anti-Kerry group, which says Kerry's testimony was unfounded and undermined the US war effort. Kerry said earlier this year his statements were ''a little over the top," but he said that there were ''policies in place that were not acceptable according to the laws of warfare."

Kranish reported from New York; Healy traveled with Kerry and reported from Nashville.