Washington – In an interview on ABC News, rather than suggest a change in course, rather than bring together Americans to face the reality of the civil war in Iraq, President Bush chose to attack John Kerry’s Iraq plan, arguing: “Frankly I hear desperate voices all over the place on the Democrat's side about Iraq. We've got some saying get out. The person I ran against in 2004, Senator Kerry, said date certain time when we would withdrawal.”

Senator Kerry responded with the following statement:

“As we heard again last night, President Bush remains profoundly wrong about Iraq. He wraps my strategy in slogans because he’s afraid to take responsibility for his Katrina foreign policy that kills and maims our soldiers and weakens America in the fight against terror.

Our country needs a genuine Iraq debate in these last twenty days before the midterm elections. We have a President who is wrong and a policy that is wrong. We have some leading Republicans who actually want to put more American troops into the middle of a growing civil war when our own generals say there is no military solution.

We must change course in Iraq. This is why I have proposed a deadline for Iraq and a comprehensive plan to end the civil war. We must refocus our military efforts from the failed occupation of Iraq to what we should have been doing all along: tracking down and killing members of al Qaeda.