Bush: Kerry would let France control US military

ALLENTOWN, Pennsylvania, Oct 1 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush charged Friday that Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry would let France or other countries decide when Washington can use force to defend itself.
"The president's job is not to take an international poll. The president's job is to defend America," the president said a day after his first debate with Kerry, which many analysts said the Democrat won.
Bush backers still fume that Paris led opposition to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a move that led to boycotts of French products and the renaming of foods like "French fries" to "Freedom fries."
"The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France," Bush told supporters a day after Kerry said the United States ought to pass a "global test" before launching a preemptive war.
Kerry spokesman David Wade accused the president of taking Kerry's words out of context and brushed off the attack as a desperate ploy, saying: "They want to run against a straw man. Instead, they have to run against John Kerry."
The Democratic senator from Massachusetts had vowed not to become the first president in US history to give up the right to launch preemptive military action to protect the United States.
"But if and when you do it ... you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons," said Kerry.
"Senator Kerry, last night, said that America has to pass some sort of global test before we can use American troops to defend ourselves. He wants our national security decisions subject to the approval of a foreign government.
"Listen, I'll continue to work with our allies and the international community, but I will never submit America's national security to an international test," Bush told the cheering crowd.
"Anytime the Republicans are basing their attack on a half sentence taken out of context it means that even they know they are not telling the whole truth," said Wade.
"It's evidence of how much their candidate is flailing and how much they want to try to distract from that. It's nonsense," he told AFP.