Kerry faults Bush on realigning troops

CINCINNATI -- Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry yesterday assailed President Bush's plan to withdraw 70,000 US troops from Europe and Asia, saying the realignment would be a boon to nuclear-armed North Korea and do nothing to strengthen the war on terror.

In a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, during which rounds of applause were occasionally ruptured by jeers, Kerry invoked his own Vietnam War enlistment, portraying his criticisms of Bush as the patriotic duty of a former military officer. The president outlined his troop redeployment plan to the VFW on Monday, and Kerry used that appearance -- as well as Bush's lack of a VFW card, which Kerry has -- to question Bush's wisdom as commander in chief.

"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars, but it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way," Kerry said to the audience of 6,000 gathered for the 105th annual VFW convention. Of Bush's plan, he added, "This is not that time or that way.

"Let's be clear: The president's vaguely-stated plan does not strengthen our hand in the war on terror. It in no way relieves the strain on our overextended military personnel -- it doesn't even begin until 2006, and it takes 10 years to achieve. And this hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitment than it provides real answers."

Kerry cited the five-decade US military presence in South Korea as having been crucial in containing the Communist regime in North Korea -- "a country that really has nuclear weapons," he added, a shot at Bush's unproven assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion of Iraq last year. But he also sounded a general note of concern about scaling back troops against the interests of allies in the war on terror.

"With Al Qaeda operating in 60 countries, we need closer alliances in every part of the world to fight and win the war on terrorism," the Massachusetts senator said.

Campaigning in Hudson, Wis., last night, Bush defended the redeployment plan.

"We don't need as many troops stationed overseas anymore because the Soviet Union is no longer a threat," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan and Bush's reelection campaign accused Kerry of changing his stand on troop redeployment just this month, pointing to an Aug. 1 interview when Kerry told ABC News that "we can significantly change the deployment of troops, not just [in Iraq] but elsewhere in the world -- in the Korean peninsula perhaps, in Europe perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us."

McClellan, picking up a line of attack that Kerry often has used against Bush, accused the Democrat of having "a 20th-century, Cold War way of thinking" that favored marshaling US troops along the borders of the Soviet Union, compared to the president's proposal for "a more flexible, more agile, more lethal, and more technologically advanced troop structure."

The Bush campaign, meanwhile, noted statements of support this week for the redeployment proposal by government officials in South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Australia.

Rand Beers, Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser and one of several aides who worked on yesterday's speech, said that the senator supported "new thinking" about troop deployment but that Bush's plan "comes at the wrong time and is done in the wrong way."

"Take NATO -- this could really cripple NATO. We have an opportunity right now to knit our relationships with the Europeans into a much more positive and outward-looking relationship. Withdrawing the troops will appear that we don't care about them, and it could keep them from turning more outward looking," said Beers, who attended Kerry's speech here yesterday.

In attacking Bush before the VFW in this swing state, Kerry ratcheted up the competition for votes from the nation's 26 million veterans and US military families, as well as from Ohio voters whose 20 electoral votes could prove decisive Nov. 2.

Kerry told the veterans that he would be "a true brother-in-arms in the White House," and at points aligned himself with the military views of Republican Senator John McCain, a Vietnam veteran who is a friend of Kerry's and who, increasingly, is cited by the Democrat when both men find themselves disagreeing with Bush.

"As Senator John McCain said, quote, 'I'm particularly concerned about moving troops out of South Korea when North Korea has probably never been more dangerous than any time since the end of the Korean War,' " Kerry said. "This is clearly the wrong signal to send at the wrong time," echoing a line that Bush has used against the Democratic nominee.

On Tuesday, Kerry followed McCain's lead and denounced a television commercial questioning Bush's record in the National Guard during the Vietnam era; McCain has similarly called on Bush to condemn an ad attacking Kerry's Vietnam record, which the president has declined to do.

Kerry received a decidedly more mixed response than the warm embrace Bush enjoyed Monday. Some men in the hall yelled, "You're lying!" and "Why didn't you support that?" when Kerry spoke of supporting military budgets (which he has at times voted to cut) and giving state-of-the-art equipment to service members. Kerry cast a protest vote last year against an $87 billion bill that, in part, would have funded new body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kerry said he would have voted for the $87 billion bill if it would have made a difference in passage.

Two Vietnam veterans, Jere L. Hill of Wareham, Mass., and Robert Gibson of Lexington, Ky., rose from their seats at the start of Kerry's speech and turned their backs on him to protest his leadership role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the early 1970s.

"When you have active-duty troops in a combat zone and you're back home protesting, you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy," Hill, the VFW state commander for Massachusetts in 1999-2000, told the Globe.

"If it had been World War II, he'd have been shot for that. There are a lot of vets who don't really like Bush, but they won't vote for Kerry because he acted so dishonorably."

Some VFW members gave Kerry a standing ovation when he called for separating disability and retirement payments so that veterans may receive both. More often, though, only a fraction of the crowd applauded, and remained seated.

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.