Kerry applies the full-court press

Kerry Chides Bush on Missing Explosives

Kerry has started to pound the Bush administration for its "catastrophic success" in Iraq. You go girl.

He needs to keep this issue in front of the electorate every day for the next 8 days. Unrelentingly. He needs to pound the points that a) this failure is a direct result of the lack of planning for the post-war phase and b) that this failure has resulted in the deaths of our troops in harms way and c) that it is yet another failure that the Bush administration wanted to keep secret from the American public and the world (can you say cover-up?). This issue is not something that can be papered over with excuses that it is Clinton's fault, or that it was unanticipated. This happened on his watch. This happened because he failed to heed the advice of his top generals in the Pentagon (Shinseki). This happened because the Bush administration had the wrong priorities.

Kerry needs to tie this failure back to the Bush/Cheney campaign theme that the war in Iraq was necessary to keep Saddam's weapons out of terrorist hands and that Bush would keep us safer. Bushco has done neither. Bush has done more to arm and energize the terrorists than Saddam could possibly have achieved had we simply kept him contained and left the IAEA to guard over his dual-use material. The Bush administration and the Pentagon civilian leadership have basically given the material to the terrorists on a silver platter through their incompetence.