Kerry 'hardly credible' - Bush
2004-09-21 21:38
New York - US President George W Bush on Tuesday dismissed a gloomy CIA forecast for Iraq as guesswork and branded Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry's warnings about deadly chaos there as "hardly credible".
"The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like," said the president.
The Central Intelligence Agency warned Bush in a secret July assessment that Iraq could plunge into civil war or at best would enjoy only tenuous political, economic and security stability, according to US officials.
Bush, meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, also condemned the beheading of US hostage Eugene Armstrong by extremists fighting US forces there.
"The barbaric action of yesterday really is unbelievable," said Allawi.
"We express our heartfelt condolences. We send our prayers to the Armstrong family. We also stand in solidarity with the American that is now being held captive. We send our prayers to his wife," said the US president.
"These killers want to shake our will. They want to determine the fate of the Iraqi people. We will not allow these thugs and terrorists to decide your fate and to decide our fate," said Bush, who hosts Allawi at the White House on Thursday.
Bush, who has repeatedly warned of escalating violence in Iraq ahead of elections scheduled for January 2005, insisted that he remained "optimistic" about the war-torn country's future.
"Listen, I understand how tough it is. The prime minister understands how tough it is. He has to live with the few who are trying to stop the aspirations of the many," he added.
Bush dismissed Kerry's charges from Monday that a "colossal failures of judgment" have wrought a "crisis of historic proportions" in Iraq.
"My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all," said Bush, who has alleged that Kerry is fickle on Iraq - a crucial message of his re-election campaign.
Bush said he and Allawi "agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell.
"And that stands in stark contrast to the statement my opponent made yesterday when he said that the world was better off with Saddam in power. I strongly disagree," said the president.
Bush seemed to be referring to Kerry's charge that the war in Iraq was a costly distraction from hunting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, and that the United States has "traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
- AFP