Presidential candidates battle miscues

WASHINGTON -- John Kerry used suspect accounting in sizing up the cost of the Iraq war and President Bush got his opponent's position wrong on withdrawing troops as the two men rushed to knock each other down as many pegs as possible in their first debate.

Sometimes, one candidate had a chance to take on the wayward claim of the other, as when Bush suggested he went to war in Iraq because "the enemy attacked us" and Kerry pointed out Saddam Hussein did no such thing.

Often, wrongful assertions or oversimplifications went unanswered, as when Kerry attacked Bush for spending too little on protecting the country from terrorism and declared, "That's why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican convention was there." The subway didn't close; some exits near the convention did.

Bush, twice during Thursday's debate, suggested al-Qaida is a vastly diminished terrorist force at the top, saying at one point that "75 percent of known al-Qaida leaders have been brought to justice," and at another, Osama bin Laden is "isolated -- 75 percent of his people have been brought to justice."

The president was actually referring to deaths or arrests of operatives who powered al-Qaida when it mounted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not those behind the organization today.

Kerry stretched in accusing Bush of spending too little on homeland security and too much in giving tax cuts to the rich. "This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security," the Massachusetts senator said. "And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut -- and that's who gets it -- long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security."

Bush's tax cuts were across the board, not just for rich people like Kerry and Bush.

And much of the money Kerry wants to save by raising taxes on the rich is already spoken for; he'd use it for health care and middle-income tax relief.

Kerry, as he often does, said the United States has spent $200 billion on the Iraq war.

An analysis by Annenberg's FactCheck.org found the true cost to be under $120 billion so far, and that Kerry reaches his figure by counting money scheduled to be spent next year, money that hasn't been requested yet and money for Afghanistan operations and U.S. cities.

Bush blasted Kerry for calling the Iraq invasion the wrong war at the wrong time and said foreign leaders would never follow a president who talked that way. But major U.S. allies thought the war was wrong before it started.

Kerry may have taken the weight of probability a step too far by accusing Bush, in essence, of letting bin Laden get away.

"Unfortunately, he escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora," the Democrat said. "We had him surrounded. But we didn't use American forces, the best trained in the world, to go kill him. The president relied on Afghan warlords, and he outsourced that job too."

There has been no definitive conclusion bin Laden was in the caves of Tora Bora in December 2001 when U.S. and Afghan troops surrounded the complex and U.S. warplanes blanketed the area with bombs. But U.S. military and intelligence officials believe he probably was. And U.S. forces did largely rely on Afghan forces on the ground to go after him.

A slip of the tongue was behind another Kerry statement. He said of Iraq, "we got weapons of mass destruction crossing the border every single day, and they're blowing people up." He meant terrorists are doing that.

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Associated Press writer Siobhan McDonough contributed to this report.