Allawi charge is boost for Kerry

By Tim Reid in Washington and James Hider in Baghdad

IRAQ’S interim Prime Minister yesterday delivered another blow to President Bush just a week before the US election when he blamed American-led forces for failing to prevent last weekend’s massacre of 49 Iraqi Army recruits.

Mr Allawi, who only last month lavished praise on Mr Bush during a White House visit, said that “gross negligence” on the part of the US and its coalition partners was to blame for the massacre of the recruits, 95 miles north of Baghdad.

Mr Kerry had already moved onto the attack against Mr Bush over Monday’s news that hundreds of tons of explosives were stolen from an Iraqi military facility after the US-led invasion, and reports yesterday of an imminent White House request for another $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Adding to the bad news from Iraq, an Iraqi insurgent group said it had kidnapped 11 Iraqi National Guardsmen, while masked gunmen warned in a videotape that Iraqi civilians and military targets would be attacked across the country if US-led forces attacked the rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

Last night aides said Mr Kerry was hastily adding Mr Allawi’s comments into his stump speech to bolster his claim that Mr Bush had pursued a disastrous post-war policy.

Mr Allawi’s comments could not have come at a worse time for Mr Bush. The massacre of the recruits “was the outcome of gross negligence by some parts of the multinational (Forces),” he said in his weekly address to Iraq’s interim national assembly.

“I think it’s very clear this was a misjudgment by the Americans. They did not provide sufficient measures to protect these people,” said Tawfiq al-Yasseri, the head of the interim parliament’s security panel. “It’s their responsibility. They are in charge of that camp and that area.”

With the race too close to call, Mr Allawi’s comments provided welcome ammunition for Mr Kerry as he spends the final week trying to persuade voters that he would make a better Commander-in-Chief and is more able to keep the country safe.

Mr Kerry, emboldened by the bad news from Iraq, lambasted the President in a day of cross-country rallies from Wisconsin to New Mexico.

At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he accused Mr Bush of failing in his “fundamental obligation” of his job as president: keeping America, and the country’s troops, as safe as possible.

Mr Kerry brushed aside reports yesterday that the 380 tons of explosives might have been taken from the al-Qaqaa military facility before the invasion. Aware that the explosives issue, the massacre and Mr Allawi’s unexpected intervention gives him perhaps his last chance to close the gap on Mr Bush over the war and national security, he declared: “He has stood in front of the American people day after day, telling us how much progress we are making in Iraq and how much safer we are under his leadership.

“And what did the President have to say about the missing explosives? Not a word.”

“Mr President, what else are you being silent about? What else are you keeping from the American people?” he asked, before adding: “When a Commander-in-Chief makes the wrong decisions, America’s security pays the price.”

Mr Kerry also blasted Mr Bush for his expected request for another $70 billion to fund the military and reconstruction costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushing the total cost to the American taxpayer since the invasion of Iraq to $225 billion.

Calling the bill “the incredible price of going it almost alone,” Mr Kerry asked: “How much more will the American people have to pay?” He also described Vice-President Cheney as being “out of touch” for calling Iraq a “remarkable success story”.

Mr Bush, who according to polls yesterday still enjoys a 16-point lead over Mr Kerry on the issue of terrorism, but a far narrower one on Iraq, stayed on the offensive, but did not mention the missing explosives, the massacre or Mr Allawi’s comments.

Also campaigning in Wisconsin, he accused Mr Kerry of having chosen a path of “weakness and inaction”. Referring to President Kennedy’s call to “pay any price and bear any burden”, Mr Kerry would follow a strategy of “cut and “run” in Iraq, Mr Bush said. In Iraq, the massacre of the recruits, claimed by the al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has left Iraqis and coalition forces shocked. The soldiers were heading for home leave after training at the US and British run base of Kirkush near the Iranian border when terrorists dressed as policemen stopped them, forced them to lie on the ground and then systematically shot each one in the back of the head.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1330600,00.html