LAS VEGAS- Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Thursday of misleading U.S. troops and… LAS VEGAS- Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush on Thursday of misleading U.S. troops and the country about the war in Iraq and said Bush was “in a fantasy world of spin” while Iraq was consumed by chaos.

Speaking to the National Guard Convention only two days after Bush appeared before the group, Kerry cited a bleak assessment of Iraq by U.S. intelligence agencies as evidence that the president has withheld unfavorable information about the war.

“I believe he failed the fundamental test of leadership- he failed to tell you the truth,” Kerry said, in what aides described as an effort to step up his criticism of Bush’s policy in Iraq. “You deserve better. The commander in chief must level with the troops and the nation. I intend to do that, on the good days and the bad days.”

The intelligence appraisal, written in July and first reported Thursday by The New York Times, paints a grim picture of Iraq and says the best scenario is for continued uncertainty in terms of governance and security. The report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, says the worst case would be the outbreak of civil war.

Kerry’s speech came amid growing wariness on Capitol Hill about the direction of the war in Iraq and after Pentagon concessions that major cities in Iraq are under the control of insurgent forces. It was delivered the same day that two Americans and a British citizen were kidnapped in Baghdad.

“I believe you deserve a president who isn’t going to gild that truth or gild our national security with politics, who is not going to ignore his own intelligence … who will give the American people the truth, not a fantasy world of spin, but a world where we challenge our brave men and women to be able to meet the test of our times,” Kerry said.

Though the 30-minute speech was one of Kerry’s toughest critiques of Bush’s Iraq policy, the Massachusetts senator offered no new ideas about how he would stabilize Iraq. As he’s said before, he argued that he’d be best equipped to seek assistance from foreign allies to reduce the burden on money and manpower that the war has placed on the United States.

For the second day in a row, Kerry spoke to a polite but hardly enthusiastic audience. The president, during his appearance, was interrupted 32 times by applause; Kerry 11 times. There was no applause during a 14-minute stretch devoted to criticism of Bush. On Wednesday, Kerry addressed an audience of largely conservative businessmen at the Detroit Economic Club.

Speaking in Minnesota, the president ridiculed Kerry, saying his challenger’s views on Iraq are always changing.

“Now, during the course of this campaign, the fellow I’m running against has probably had about eight positions on Iraq,” Bush said. “For the war, but wouldn’t provide the funding; then he was the antiwar candidate; then he said, knowing everything we know today, I’d have done- did the same thing; then he said, well, we’re spending too much money- that’s after he said we weren’t spending enough money.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also accused Kerry of shifting his views on the war for political reasons.

“Senator Kerry said today he would always be straight with the American people on the good days and the bad days. In Senator Kerry’s case, that means when the headlines are good he’s for the war, and when his poll numbers are bad, he’s against it,” Cheney said in remarks prepared for delivery in Reno, Nev.

The back and forth came as some national polls showed the race tightening. A Pew Research Center poll found the race to be in a statistical dead heat, but said Kerry had lost the confidence of some voters that he could win the election. The poll found that opinions on the president’s handling of Iraq had improved since early summer, but that 58 percent of voters said it still wasn’t clear what Bush would do about Iraq.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans also were raising questions in committee hearings and in comments to reporters.

“The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we’re winning,” Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told reporters. “Right now we’re not winning, things are getting worse. Measure that by any measurement you want- more casualties, more deaths, oil pipeline sabotage- you pick the measurement standard and it’s worse than where it was six months ago or 12 months ago. … We may have to start looking at some shifts in policy, some more creative ways to do this.”

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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents William Douglas in Minnesota and Ron Hutcheson in Washington contributed to this report.)

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