"If you love our troops you do not continue having them sitting in harm's way playing Bush roulette, saying, `Maybe you'll make it, maybe you won't,' " Sharpton said. "It's the most shameful act I've seen in foreign policy in my lifetime."
Sharpton called it "disingenuous" for fellow contenders Senators John F. Kerry, John Edwards, and Joseph I. Lieberman to now question the Bush administration on exit strategies from Iraq.
"You should not now say, `Oh my God, where is the exit strategy?' You should have asked him that when you gave him entry," Sharpton said.
Sharpton said he was the first candidate in the race to oppose the war. He said he never believed the Bush administration's contentions that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He also reiterated concerns about Bush's election, saying it "lacked legitimacy." He said the Texas redistricting issue, in which Democrats lost seats, and Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as governor of California, replacing a Democrat, are part of a "nonmilitary civil war" run by conservatives.
"The right wing in this country has learned how to manipulate emotions, fear," Sharpton said.
Sharpton thus far is not polling well. He garnered less than 1 percent of those surveyed for a recent Boston Globe/ WBZ poll of New Hampshire Democrats and independents.
In the same poll, Howard Dean holds a 13-point lead over Kerry in New Hampshire, whose presidential primary is Jan. 27.
