Kerry says he'd still vote to authorize Iraq war

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. -- John F. Kerry for the first time yesterday said he still would have voted to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, even if he had known in October 2002 that US intelligence was flawed, that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush, whose administration cited the weapons and alleged terrorist links to justify the war, challenged the Democratic presidential nominee on Friday at a campaign rally in Stratham, N.H., to tell voters whether intelligence disclosures since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 would have altered his position on the war. ''My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq," Bush said. ''The American people deserve a clear yes-or-no answer."

In response, Kerry, distinguishing between invading Iraq and authorizing the action said, ''Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have." Kerry has said the decision to invade rested with the president.

Then, in his most direct challenge to Bush about the war, Kerry listed four questions for the president, inquiring about prewar intelligence, postwar planning, the lack of efforts to bring other nations into the war as allies, and why Americans were misled about the war.

And unlike Bush, who never mentioned Kerry by name during his New Hampshire campaign stop, the Massachusetts senator said, ''My question to President Bush is: Why did he rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did he rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth? Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way that we deserve it and relieve a pressure from the American people?

''There are four not-hypothetical questions -- like the president's -- [but] real questions that matter to Americans, and I hope you'll get the answers to those questions, because the American people deserve them," Kerry said.

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said yesterday that Kerry's reaffirmation of his 2002 vote did not clarify whether the senator would have gone to war himself.

''John Kerry has still not answered the president's central question about whether, as commander in chief, he would have removed Saddam Hussein from power," Schmidt said. ''He refuses to give a straight answer on central questions regarding the war on terror and on Iraq. He said he would bring American troops home in six months, but only days ago he said troop strength should be decided by military commanders. John Kerry has engaged in a level of political gamesmanship on national security that is greater than any man who has ever sought the presidency."

Kerry's remarks yesterday came after a series of statements about Iraq. Kerry has said previously that US presidents deserve to have military leverage against an enemy, but that Bush misused the authority granted by the 2002 Senate vote. He has accused Bush of misleading Congress about weapons of mass destruction to win the vote. When pressed by reporters, Kerry has refused to call his 2002 vote a mistake, instead saying that he would have waged war differently. He has also called the vote correct given the information members of Congress had at the time. And last week, Kerry said that if he had been president last year, he might have ended up going to war with Iraq as well.

The Massachusetts senator also sought to clear up a conflict in his campaign rhetoric about partially withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Kerry has said throughout the year that, by the end of his first term in 2008, he hoped to replace some US troops with new military complements from European and Muslim nations. In an interview on National Public Radio on Friday, however, he said he would aim to achieve that goal by next summer. All along, Kerry has said he would heed the recommendations of US commanders about troop levels. deployed abroad.

Yesterday, he again said he hoped troops would be home within a year.

''If the commanders asked for it, then you'd have to respond to what the commanders asked for," Kerry said. ''But my goal, my diplomacy, my statesmanship, is to get our troops reduced in number . . . over that period of time. Obviously, we have to see how events unfold."

He said his conditions for reducing troops in Iraq would be the country's stability, the ''training and transformation" of the Iraqi national security force, and Baghdad's ability to hold elections.

Asked whether he had received written or verbal assurances from foreign leaders about sending troops to Iraq, Kerry told reporters to ask his colleagues in the Senate, such as Joseph Biden of Delaware and Carl Levin of Michigan, who have met with officials abroad.

He reiterated his view that Arab countries could be persuaded by arguing that an unstable Iraq is not in their self-interest.

''American presidents should not send American forces into war without a plan to win the peace. This president did not have a plan to win the peace, and the evidence is still that they are scrambling and struggling to try to find a way to do that," Kerry said.

No foreign leaders or top diplomats have openly offered to help Kerry achieve the partial withdrawal. The Los Angeles Times, in a survey of officials in several allied countries, reported yesterday that Kerry's troop-swap plan was seen as unrealistic and that low public support in their nations for the Iraq war made it unlikely that they would change course if Kerry were elected.

Kerry's stand on the Iraq war -- including his vote last fall against $87 billion in emergency funding for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- has bedeviled him throughout the campaign. The daily barrage from Republicans who say he is a waffler has led Senator John S. McCain and General Tommy Franks, the retired US commander of the Iraq war, to vouch voluntarily for his potential abilities as commander in chief.

Kerry spent yesterday morning with his wife, Teresa, and daughter Vanessa on a two-engine Augusta 109 helicopter over northwest Arizona on their way to the Grand Canyon, detouring at one point to check out a small forest fire. Landing by the canyon's southern rim, Kerry took a 30-minute walk with the two women and his stepson Andre. He exited the trail at Powell's Point, where a monument marks an 1869 expedition, and greeted visitors and spoke to reporters.

He pledged to increase spending on US parks by $600 million over five years, criticizing the Bush administration for cutting back services and not doing enough to improve security at the parks.

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