LOS ANGELES — Howard Dean declared Monday that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer," provoking an avalanche of new attacks from rivals who have seized on Sunday's surprise news as a way of redrawing the foreign policy debate in the the Democratic presidential campaign.
Dean, the former governor of Vermont, intended his speech here to the distinguished Pacific Council as a sweeping international tour of what he said were his moderate foreign policy views, a pathway beyond the anti-war label that accounted for his early campaign success.
But after the capture of Saddam, Dean and his aides rewrote the speech to issue a fresh denunciation of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq and prosecution of the global war on terror.
"The difficulties and tragedies which we have faced in Iraq show the administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help, and at the extraordinary cost, so far, of $166 billion," he said. "The capture of Saddam does not end our difficulties from the aftermath of the administration's war to oust him."
Dean's Democratic opponents immediately seized on the speech to raise new questions about his viability in a general election during a flurry of hastily scheduled conference calls as well as in their own planned campaign events. At the same time, a group of Democrats known informally as a "Stop Dean" coalition began airing a television advertisement in New Hampshire and South Carolina that shows a frightening photograph of Osama bin Laden with the warning, "It's time for Democrats to start thinking about Dean's inexperience.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who supported the war, spent a second day in row hammering Dean on the Iraq issue, and scheduled a speech for Tuesday in New Hampshire to highlight their differences on national security.
Other Democratic contenders, even as they had harsh words for Dean, echoed some of his comments about Iraq, using Saddam's capture as a new opportunity to distinguish themselves from President Bush.
At a public library in Des Moines, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina tweaked his own foreign policy speech to reflect the developments, adding Iraq —a topic he has lately been avoiding — to remarks that had largely focused on nuclear proliferation and other hot spots. Nearby, at a senior center, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts turned a talk on Medicare reform into a treatise on Iraq.
And in The Hague, where he is testifying in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark reminded his audience of the continuing attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, saying, "The war is not over."
Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, who Dean has criticized during the campaign for voting for the Iraq resolution, on Monday accused his opponent of shuffling to the center to bolster credibility for a general election.