Bush, Cheney 'In Denial' Over Iraq - Edwards
Wed Oct 6, 2004 03:33 PM ET
By Jeff Franks
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - President Bush is in "a complete state of denial" about the deteriorating situation in Iraq, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards charged on Wednesday.
Edwards, traveling to the key battleground state of Florida, was driving home a charge he leveled the night before in a testy debate with Vice President Dick Cheney. In their only face-off, the senator from North Carolina questioned the administration's unwillingness to "be straight" with the American people and questioned its ability to bring peace to Iraq.
"This president is completely out of touch with reality," Edwards told a cheering crowd of about 600 at the convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Edwards said Bush, in a speech Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, continued to deny the true state of affairs in Iraq, where an insurgency has raged for more than a year since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
"He won't acknowledge the mess in Iraq. All they have to do is turn their television on," Edwards said.
The first-term U.S. senator, who was given generally good reviews for his debate performance against the more experienced Cheney in Ohio Tuesday night, eagerly seized on the report released in Washington by Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector who said Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before last year's U.S.-led invasion.
"All of that known and Dick Cheney said again last night that he would have done everything the same. George Bush has said he would have done everything the same. They are in a complete state of denial about Iraq," he told reporters later.
"The problem is of course we got the same old tired ideas, the same old attacks, the same old tired rhetoric. There are no new ideas, there are no new plans," Edwards responded.
"They can't fix a mess when they don't even recognize there is a mess."
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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