Kerry would change war on terror

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry said yesterday that he will treat the war on terror "primarily" as law-enforcement action even as he pledged to remain committed to Iraq and to personally plead for international help in policing and rebuilding that nation.

"In order to know who they are, where they are, what they're planning and be able to go get them before they get us, you need the best intelligence, best law-enforcement cooperation in the world," the Massachusetts senator said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It's an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort," he said. "And we're putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight."

Marc Racicot, chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign, said Mr. Kerry's formula won't work.

"Serving terrorists with legal papers will not win this war. This is a pre-9/11 attitude that turns a blind eye to the threats that face our country," he said.

In other comments on the show yesterday, Mr. Kerry stood by his statements that he received endorsements from numerous foreign leaders and made light of his 1971 assertion of having committed "atrocities" while serving in Vietnam.

Mr. Racicot also criticized Mr. Kerry for saying he would consider voting against funding for the war effort in the future, as he did last year, depending on the circumstances.

"This conditional support for the troops John Kerry voted to send to Iraq in the first place demonstrates a disturbing lack of judgment," Mr. Racicot said.

Mr. Kerry said a change of president also would help attract international efforts in stabilizing the situation in Iraq.

"It may well be that we need a new president, a breath of fresh air, to re-establish credibility with the rest of the world, so that we can have a believable administration as to how we proceed," he said.