Kerry says focus on Iraq endangers US

[JoFerret]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/politics/campaign/30KERR.html


WASHINGTON — Issuing a new broadside against President Bush's national security policy, Senator John Kerry said that Mr. Bush's "almost myopic" focus on Iraq had made Americans "less safe" by giving North Korea and Iran the time and opportunity to speed toward the construction of nuclear weapons.

In an hourlong interview Friday on foreign policy, Mr. Kerry covered pre-emptive military strikes and a range of other issues. He termed the administration's approach to remaking Iraq a "crapshoot." And Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, touched on a series of proposals he will make next week to limit the spread of nuclear materials, arguing all the while that Mr. Bush's assessments of threats to America were riddled with misjudgments.

While he said that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was "in a worse neighborhood" and thus posed the potential of destabilizing the Mideast, Mr. Kerry argued that North Korea and Iran — and the loose nuclear material floating around the former Soviet Union — posed the more direct and serious threat of putting unconventional weapons into the hands of terror groups.

Mr. Bush, he argued, had relegated those problems to the back burner, adding that North Korea "was a far more compelling threat in many ways, and it belonged at the top of the agenda."

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[Massacure]

1. North Korea was the bigger threat.

They have two operating nuclear reactors, unlike Iraq. Plus there is also the fact that the country is smaller, and that they can easily call up troops from South Korea to serve in the North.

Anyways, if Iran and North Korea have nukes then we are pretty much as their whim now.

[JI7]

2. i don't like this headline

it should say "ONLY" or "JUST" focus on iraq was the problem. not "focus on iraq" itself. it makes it seem as if he is saying iraq is not a problem.