"Mr. President, it's time for you to take responsibility for (your actions). Our troops are doing a heroic job -- the problem is our commander-in-chief isn't doing his," presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in one of several statements by the campaign on the issue.
In the wake of reports some 380 tons of explosives were missing from a storage area in Iraq, the Bush administration has offered several explanations, including that Russians took the explosives and that they were taken before the United States took control in the country.
Campaign surrogate Giuliani said Thursday on the "Today Show,""No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
Senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart dismissed the statement as "the latest example of the excuse presidency where the buck stops anywhere but the Oval Office," while spokesman Phil Singer called it audacious.
"If George Bush understood what it means to be commander-in-chief, he'd understand that this is his responsibility and wouldn't be dispatching his allies to denigrate our troops," Singer said in a statement.
Copyright 2004 by United Press International
