Edwards’ wife slams Bush security policies

WATERVILLE – In her second Maine campaign stop in a week, the wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards blasted President Bush’s homeland security policies Friday, accusing the administration of playing to Americans’ worst fears in advance of an election that’s only 10 days away.

“He’s trying to scare the American people in order to get a political result,” said Elizabeth Edwards, while speaking to a town hall forum at Waterville High School.

Emphasizing that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts has a plan to defend the United States, Edwards said President Bush has demonstrated he preferred to withhold information from the American people in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

She also maintained that President Bush “dragged his feet” when a special commission investigating the attacks requested specific information and refused to provide certain documents.

“We kept hearing [the president] say, ‘Oh, Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry had all the information that we had,'” she said. But if Edwards and Kerry already had access to those daily presidential reports, what would have been the big deal about the administration releasing the information to the public, she asked aloud. “The truth is that those were an important part of the information to find out how it was we could do better and to find out where the holes were.”

In an interview with reporters after the town meeting, Edwards said the president would only testify before the commission with Vice President Dick Cheney in the room, and Bush’s national security adviser insisted she would only testify if she didn’t have to do so under oath.

“It was one thing after another and now we’re finding out that the CIA has done a report that really pinpoints where the problems happened. And what is this administration doing? They’re trying to wait until after the election to release a report that should have been released in June,” she said. “It is unacceptable for a president who says that keeping us safe is the most important thing when he is manipulating the date on which to release these reports in order to get a political advantage.”

Sen. Carol Weston, a Republican from Montville, was selected by the Maine Bush-Cheney campaign to respond to Edwards’ remarks. Emphasizing she knew little about the details of the 9-11 report or ongoing homeland security tactics, she said she watched her son finish his paperwork to enlist in the Navy on the day the World Trade Center was attacked.

“He did so with confidence and that was confidence in his commander in chief,” she said. “Sometimes I think we forget September 11 and what transpired, but since then we have not been attacked on our own soil. [Edwards] can quote all those details, but the bottom line is that we have acted on the best information we had. The terrorists can only win if we pause, act confused and retreat. President Bush is steering the course and it is the right course.”