Kerry says date to halt funding for Iraq a must

Sen. John Kerry said in Seattle on Tuesday that he welcomed news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backs a plan to cut funding for the Iraq war within a year.

It was clear that Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and the Democrats' 2004 presidential candidate, thought it was about time his party stood up to President Bush.

Kerry led an effort last year to set a firm withdrawal date that garnered only his vote and those of a dozen of the Senate's most liberal Democrats.

"I don't care what the votes are. You've got to do what's right," he said.

"You have to do what I have been proposing for four years: Engage in the diplomatic summitry that puts the real issues on the table and gets the world to take a stake in this. It's the only way to resolve this without further mayhem and chaos."

Kerry supports a plan to cut off funding a year from now except for training of Iraqi troops, fighting al-Qaida and protecting U.S. troops.

Bush criticized Democrats on Tuesday and said if Congress doesn't soon pass a war-funding bill, "it will have significant consequences for our men and women in the armed forces."

Kerry, though, says there should be no compromise.

"Everybody understands George Bush is responsible for this war," he said.

But Kerry got a quick reminder that whatever the polls show, it doesn't mean people won't have questions about the Democrats' plan.

Kerry did a series of interviews Tuesday from a closed coffee shop off the lobby of the Westin Hotel. At the end of his last interview for the day, he thanked the barista who had stayed on duty in the senator's makeshift office.

Melissa Pugh, 22, welcomed Kerry's thanks, and told him about her service as a medical technician in the Air Force Reserve. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, asked if she had done a tour of duty yet. "Not yet, unfortunately," she said.

Pugh said she feels a responsibility to fight. And she did some quick lobbying over the baked-goods counter.

"I just hope you don't cut the budget," she said to Kerry.

He tried to assure her, saying, "What we're going to do is responsibly manage the war. I want you guys to succeed."

And he said that can't happen if troops are dropped in the middle of a civil war in Iraq. Pugh said she worries, though, about the effect of a prolonged debate in D.C.

"Well," she said, "I hope you don't start a civil war on Capitol Hill."

After Kerry left, Pugh had no criticism of the senator. But she does worry about what would happen if money for the war is cut.

"The only people who will suffer are our troops and innocent Iraqis," she said.

Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, were in Seattle as part of a tour promoting their new book, "This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future." They appeared at Town Hall on Tuesday night.

Kerry was buoyed by this week's U.S. Supreme Court decision saying the Bush administration violated the Clean Air Act by not regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.

He said that should help "change the debate to some degree" about global warming. But he still expects opposition for legislation he will push to cap carbon emissions.

Kerry also may find some skeptics among Democratic lawmakers close to the auto industry.

"This is a life-or-death issue, where you have to do what gets the job done and nothing less than that should be satisfactory," he said.

That's what he says about ending the war in Iraq, too.

"That's why I wanted to be president," he said.

And that leads to a post-mortem on the 2004 campaign.

"I lost to two lies. Lie number one was about the war in Iraq and lie number two about me personally and my service in Vietnam," he said.

"Well, I'm a big boy. ... I'm going to keep going. But I will never, ever, ever let anybody get away with the least of these kinds of approaches to American politics. We thought we had done enough to answer the lies. We obviously learned you can't do enough."

David Postman: 360-236-8267 or dpostman@seattletimes.com