Kerry and Bush come out swinging on Iraq in second debate

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, Oct 8 (AFP) - John Kerry and George W. Bush came out swinging on Iraq in their debate Friday with the Democrat accusing the president of turning his campaign into a "weapon of mass deception" and the Republican blasting Kerry for alleged flip flops.
Iraq again dominated as the two men, their voices rising, slugged it out in a 90-minute "town hall" meeting at Washington University here, the second of three encounters before the tight November 2 election.
"The president didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq so he's really turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception," Kerry said in a response to a question on whether he was wishy-washy on policy matters.
"The result is that you've been bombarded with advertisements suggesting that I've changed a position on this or that or the other," the Massachusetts senator said.
Bush responded with a new attack on Kerry for first voting to authorize military action in Iraq and then opposing the conduct of the war, and then voting against 87 billion dollars in reconstruction funds.
"That sends a confusing signal to people," Bush said. "He said he thought Saddam Hussein was a grave threat and now says it was a mistake to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
"I can see why people think that he changes position quite often, because he does," the president said.
Bush brushed off a report by his chief arms inspector this week that said Saddam scrapped his weapons of mass destruction years ago but staunchly defended his decision to invade in March 2003.
"I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons and we've got an intelligence group together to figure out why," Bush said.
"But Saddam Hussein was a unique threat and the world is better off without him in power and my opponent's plans lead me to conclude that Saddam Hussein would still be in power and the world would be more dangerous."
"The world is more dangerous today because the president didn't make the right judgments," Kerry shot back.
The Democrat said despite Bush's attacks, he had never changed his position that Saddam was a threat "but I would have used that authority wisely, not rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.
"I would have brought our allies to our side. ... This president rushed to war, pushed our allies aside, and Iran is now more dangerous and so is North Korea with nuclear weapons. He took his eye off the ball with Osama Bin Laden."
Despite the report by the Iraq Survey Group that Saddam was willing to give up his weapons to work toward a lifting of UN sanctions, Bush insisted "sanctions were not working. The United Nations was not effective at removing Saddam Hussein.
"Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies," Bush said.
Kerry responded that the goal of the sanctions was not to remove Saddam but to remove the weapons of mass destruction.
"And if we'd used smart diplomacy we could have saved 200 billion dollars and an invasion of Iraq and right now, Osama bin Laden might be in jail or dead. That's the war against terror," the Democrat said.
Kerry said that Bush had left Iraq in "chaos" and had been unable to muster help from US allies or NATO, excluding them from the reconstruction process.
"Now, that's not a good way to build support and reduce the risk for our troops and make America safer," he said.
"I'm going to get the training done for our troops. I'm going to get the training of Iraqis done, faster. And I'm going to get our allies back to the table."