US: Senator John Kerry yesterday accused the Bush re-election campaign of lying in television advertisements depicting him as somone who voted against giving US troops in Iraq all they needed.
"That's a lie, just an outright lie," he said, calling the ads "craven and misleading". In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, the Democratic presidential candidate also accused President George Bush of having a "stunningly ineffective" foreign policy. "Our diplomacy has been about as arrogant and ineffective as anything I've ever seen," Mr Kerry said.
However he said: "we cannot fail" in Iraq and "if it requires more troops, that's what we have to do."
National security adviser Ms Condoleezza Rice challenged Senator Kerry's contention that Iraq would be more stable with a broader coalition.
"The idea that somehow if there were a UN flag instead of a coalition flag, that these thugs would not be attacking, is, frankly, I think, just a little bit naive," she said.
Mr Kerry dismissed comments made after his return from Vietnam in 1971 that the UN should be given control of US forces overseas, calling it "one of those stupid things a 27-year-old kid says when you're fresh back from Vietnam and angry about it." He also said that when he spoke then about US atrocities in Vietnam and called US politicians "war criminals", "the words were honest, but a little bit over the top".