Dean: Bush terror policy failed

2004-03-14 21:31

Washington - Thursday's bombings in Madrid proved that the overthrow one year ago of the regime in Iraq has not made the world safer, former presidential candidate Howard Dean said Sunday, assailing President George W Bush's foreign policy.

"For the president of the United States to assert that we were safer because (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein is in jail is ludicrous, given what happened three days ago in Spain," Dean, a Democrat and former Vermont governor, told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Dean, whose candidacy was fuelled largely by outrage by his supporters over the US-led war in Iraq nearly one year ago, led most opinion polls prior to the start of the January's Democratic caucus and primary elections.

He dropped out of the race, however, after Massachusetts Senator John Kerry dominated those nominating contests to choose the candidate to face Republican incumbent George W Bush in the November 2 presidential election.

Dean, who is now backing Kerry, said Bush misled the country when he argued that Saddam was an imminent threat, and Kerry would have a more effective policy in Iraq and other foreign hotspots.

"John Kerry is an internationalist," Dean said.

"We forfeited the moral leadership of this world, a position that we had been in since the end of World War I, when George Bush went into Iraq unilaterally," said Dean

"We deserve that moral leadership title back again. I think Kerry will bring it to us."

- AFP