Top Republican officials launched a fierce counterattack yesterday against Democratic critics of the prewar intelligence about Iraq, harshly ridiculing their political opponents for challenging President Bush on foreign policy and foreshadowing an approach the party plans to take in the 2004 presidential campaign.
Ed Gillespie, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, described Democrats as angry about being out of power and lambasted several of the opposing presidential candidates by name. He and other prominent speakers, including former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, raised the specter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as the best argument for toppling Saddam Hussein - a powerful statement less than a mile from the site where the World Trade Center fell.
''If you get the impression the other party has come to the conclusion that what's worst for the American people is what's best for them, it's only because it's an explicit strategy,'' Gillespie said. ''They offer Americans a steady diet of protest and pessimism. They're still protesting the 2000 election. Some of their loudest voices protested the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.''
In particular, Gillespie accused Senators John Edwards of North Carolina, Bob Graham of Florida, John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut of switching their views on Iraq after the regime toppled in order to appeal to their party's liberal base. ''Their new rhetoric may be good positioning in a Democratic primary, but it will not make us safer as a nation,'' he said.
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