Democratic presidential hopefuls bash Bush

"We knew there weren't any weapons of mass destruction," said Dennis Kucinich, a congressman from Ohio, said Sunday at a political forum here. "Lying to the American people is a weapon of mass destruction, Mr. Bush."

Former Vermont governor, Howard Dean, an opponent of the war, noted that US forces had been in control of Iraq for over 50 days and hadn't turned up any evidence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

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"We're finding out that the administration wasn't truthful with us," he told a largely black and Latino audience during a political forum that brought together seven of the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls.

The only woman in the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination -- Carol Moseley Braun -- called the Bush administration's pre-emptive strike on Iraq "a war of choice and not necessity," that "put young American men and women in harm's way for no good reason."

The only other black candidate the field, Reverend Al Sharpton, also weighed in on the subject of Iraq during the forum hosted by the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

"Bush led us in (to the war) saying there were weapons of mass destruction that we cannot find," Sharpton said, suggesting that former president Bill Clinton "would have been impeached," for allegedly misleading the US public the way that president Bush had done.

The heavy-hitters among the field of seven Democratic White House hopefuls steered clear of the politically tricky question of Iraq, which has come to be seen as a litmus test of patriotism.

Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts senator John Kerry, and the senator for Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, chose, instead, to assail the president on his record on the economy, education, health care, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Senator Joe Lieberman came closest in challenging the president on what many pundits see as his strongest suits: national defense, and homeland security.