AP Analysis: Truth first campaign victim

Kerry claims foreign leaders have urged him to beat the Republican incumbent. Bush says Kerry wants to raise taxes by $900 billion. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says he never called Iraq an immediate threat. And Secretary of State Colin Powell says he's above politics.

If you believe Bush's and Kerry's accusations about each other, both are opposed to body armor for U.S. troops in Iraq.

Few of their assertions are patently wrong; most reside in the murky gray area between correct and incorrect -- a rhetorical margin of error. Just as Bush convinced many Americans in 2000 that Democrat Al Gore fabricated his biography and record, Bush and Kerry hope to open a credibility gap.

Voters are left wondering, who is more incredible?

"We see this every cycle, but usually not this early or this obvious," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Kerry set the standard with a series of unsubstantiated claims, including an assertion last week that he has met foreign leaders who tell him, "You've got to beat this guy."

Nobody disputes that the Iraq war has frayed U.S. relations with allies, but Kerry has refused to identify foreign leaders behind his boast, and none have stepped forward.

Top campaign advisers privately acknowledged that Kerry made a mistake by appearing to side with other nations over his own -- and using a curious sources-tell-me construction that might be becoming a habit. He has quoted "friends in the British government" and sources "on the highest authority" to support other foreign policy assertions.

Powell demanded that Kerry identify the leaders and suggested the Democrat flip-flopped on the issue of job outsourcing. Even so, Powell said, "I don't do politics."

Bush chastised Kerry from the Oval Office, saying, "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with the fact."

That's a bold statement from a president who went to war assuring Americans that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, using flawed intelligence to support his case. CIA director George Tenet recently told Congress that analysts "never said there was an imminent threat."

That didn't stop Bush and his advisers from using such language in the run-up to the war. While Bush spoke of a "grave and gathering" threat in Iraq, Rumsfeld told Congress, "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people."

And yet, the defense secretary said Sunday that only his critics used the "immediate threat" phrase. "I didn't. The president didn't," he told CBS. "It's become kind of folklore that that's what happened."

Fact and folklore mingle in the debate over Kerry's economic plan. In the first negative ad of the general election, Bush accused his rival of seeking to raise taxes by $900 billion.

The figure is wrong in the sense that Kerry has never proposed that large a tax increase. But the president was only taking advantage of a multibillion dollar hole in Kerry's health care plan: It costs as much as $900 billion, but Kerry has not explained how he would pay for it.

Another ad accuses Kerry of voting against funds for U.S. troops, including money for body armor. It is based on Kerry's vote against an $87 billion bill for the military and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kerry, who supported Bush's war resolution then campaigned against it, said he voted against the spending bill because he did not support the president's military and reconstruction plans. His tortured explanation illustrates why Bush believes he can cast Kerry as a flip-flopper.

"I actually did vote for his $87 billion, before I voted against it," Kerry said Tuesday, explaining that he supported a failed amendment that would have paid for the Iraq and Afghanistan programs by repealing Bush tax cuts.

Kerry says Bush has tried to cut troops' pay and has not supplied enough body armor in Iraq.

Jamieson said Kerry is not the first politician criticized for a vote on a spending bill loaded with hundreds of provisions, not all of them consistent with a candidate's views. Bush, never a lawmaker, doesn't have Kerry's burden -- 19 years of Senate votes.

But the president will be held accountable for what happens on his watch, including an unsteady economy and the constant threat of terrorism. That point was driven home Wednesday, when a car bomb destroyed a Baghdad hotel as Kerry delivered a speech criticizing Bush's foreign policies.

"We are still bogged down in Iraq," Kerry said. "What we have seen is a steady loss of lives and mounting cost in dollars with no end in sight."

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EDITORS: Ron Fournier has covered national politics for The Associated Press since 1993.