The New York Times – Bush Adds Teeth to His Attacks on Kerry By DAVID E. SANGER and JODI WILGOREN

Using phrases that appeared to reflect the language of one of his leading advisers, Karen Hughes, Mr. Bush accused Mr. Kerry of taking “the easy path of protest and defeatism,” a phrase that evoked Mr. Kerry’s statements about Vietnam 34 years ago. His use of terms like “a policy of weakness,” “giving up the fight” and “a strategy of retreat” appeared intended to paint Mr. Kerry as an appeaser at best and a coward at worst.

Mr. Kerry’s campaign, clearly outraged, described the statements as brazen distortions, driven by desperation as the casualties in Iraq mounted. Kerry aides promised an aggressive response in a new television advertisement to be broadcast on Tuesday and a speech in Iowa on Wednesday.

Mike McCurry, Mr. Kerry’s chief spokesman, called Mr. Bush’s remarks a “thoroughly dishonest speech” that deliberately twisted Mr. Kerry’s words.

For his part, Mr. Kerry seized on a new report in The Washington Post that Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez complained to the Pentagon last winter, when he was the top America commander on the ground in Iraq, that he lacked supplies vital to successful combat operations.

“Despite the president’s arrogant boasting that he’s done everything right in Iraq and that he’s made no mistakes, the truth is beginning to come out and it’s beginning to catch up with him,” Mr. Kerry told a crowd….

Anyone who has seen Kerry campaign in the primary or the general election has seen he is no quiter, no softie. We see with our own eyes Bush’s lies. mjh