WASHINGTON — Sen. John F. Kerry's tougher tone in a speech Thursday highlighted his new effort to sharpen his differences with President Bush on the conflict in Iraq.
Kerry's changed approach may reflect both opportunity and necessity: It coincides with an upsurge in insurgent attacks across Iraq but also follows a tilt toward Bush in recent surveys on public attitudes about the war.
Continued turmoil in Iraq could reverse Bush's gains on the issue before election day, most experts agree. But the recent trend in opinion suggests the president is succeeding in his efforts to define the Iraq war as a critical step in the long-term struggle against terrorism. And that is increasing pressure on Kerry to more fundamentally challenge Bush on the Iraq situation.
"The president is winning the debate over Iraq, despite the conditions on the ground," said Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council aide in the Clinton administration. "You have to go at the heart of the argument Bush is making: that Iraq is part of the war on terror. You have to make clear it has undermined our ability to fight the war on terror."
Those arguments, shared by some of Kerry's foreign policy and political advisors, appeared to be influencing a long-running dispute within the Kerry camp about how aggressively the Democratic presidential candidate should criticize the president over the conflict.
After focusing of late on the war's cost -- which many in both parties consider a second-tier concern, both politically and substantively -- Kerry now is more directly indicting Bush's strategy and suggesting it is headed for failure.
"With each passing month, stability and security seem farther and farther away," Kerry said Thursday to the National Guard Assn. in Las Vegas.
Senior Kerry aides say such pointed criticism may be only the first step toward a more frontal assault on Bush's case that the war will reduce the looming threat of terrorism by encouraging the spread of democracy in the Middle East.
"We have to separate [the Iraq war] from the overall war on terror and make the case that this ... diverted resources to something that did not contribute to the war on terror," said Joe Lockhart, Kerry's new senior communications advisor.
Kerry pressed that case Thursday when he declared, "The mess in Iraq has set us back -- way back -- in the war on terror. The simple fact is, when it comes to the war on terror, George W. Bush has taken his eye off the ball."
