Vice President Dick Cheney campaigned in northwest Iowa yesterday with his wife by his side. About 500 people gathered in the Sioux City Convention Center last night to hear Cheney, who criticized democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as incapable of leading the war on terror. “I don’t think he can cut it. I think bottom line that he’s got record of weakness and a strategy of retreat in mind here,” Cheney said. Kerry has been criticizing the Bush Administration for failing to secure 380 tons of explosives in Iraq that are now missing. Cheney fired back last night. “John Kerry’s perfectly prepared to say virtually anything to try to get elected,” Cheney said. “As we get closer and closer to the election, we get more and more outrageous charges made that can’t be substantiated.” Cheney said the arms depot was likely empty when American troops even got there. But video shot by reporters from K-S-T-P television in Minneapolis who were embedded with troops who stopped at the depot on their way to Baghdad shows the troops looking through containers that experts say were the explosives international inspectors had warned the U.S. to guard. Cheney said last night that Saddam Hussein “moved this stuff out before the war even started.” Cheney said Kerry’s criticism is not warranted and meant to “advance his own political interests.”
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