Kennedy blasts administration on Iraq war
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Sen. Ted Kennedy
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From the Wolf Blitzer Reports staff in Washington:
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Ted Kennedy gives a major foreign policy speech about this time every year. Wednesday, the timing and the blistering nature of his attack on President Bush offered a barrage of heavy artillery for Democrats vying for the White House.
"The administration and the majority in Congress have put the state of our union at risk, and they do not deserve another term in the White House or in control of Congress," said Sen. Kennedy.
For nearly an hour, the senator dissected the Iraq war, laying out what he believes was a systematic, political calculation from the president's first days in office.
"The agenda was clear: Find a rationale to end Saddam's regime."
The architects of the war, according to Kennedy, were "Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz -- the Axis of War."
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"By far the most serious consequence of the unjustified and unnecessary war in Iraq is that it made the war on terrorism harder to win," said the senator.
Kennedy's attacks grew personal as his speech continued: "The administration is vindictive and mean-spirited ... The administration is breathtakingly arrogant."
Arrogant: A word used twice by Kennedy to describe the selling of the war and the Bush team's dealings with the United Nations.
The White House fired back.
"He just needs to be reminded that the president worked with Congress. The president worked with the U.N. as he continued to work through the issue of whether or not we went to war in Iraq," said Commerce Secretary Don Evans.
At a briefing Wednesday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, "Let me remind you that the world is safer and better because of the action that we took to remove a brutal regime from power in Iraq."
Ted Kennedy, still game for a fight, signed-off with the line, "The election cannot come too soon."
