WHEELING, W.Va. – President Bush said yesterday that Democrat John Kerry is using “upside-down” logic when he says terrorists’ recruiting efforts are getting a boost from the war on terrorism.

“During the ’90s, the terrorists were recruiting and training and plotting for war with us long before we went to war with them,” said Mr. Bush, campaigning for re-election in West Virginia.

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Bush’s Democratic rival, has said administration policies create anti-American sentiment around the world and encourage rather than discourage people to join terrorist cells.

“I think it’s wrong to provide excuses for their (terrorists’) hatred,” Mr. Bush said. “You don’t create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back.”

Mr. Kerry, too, says he would vigorously press the war on terrorism but also says he would work harder to gain help from other countries for ending the fighting and rebuilding Iraq.

Mr. Bush defends his actions in Iraq at nearly every stop on the campaign trail, his hard-line rhetoric prompting cheers from supporters packing his rallies.

But in an interview with Time magazine, Mr. Bush suggested he would have used different tactics to invade Iraq had he known “that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day.”

He called the swift military offensive that led to the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 “a catastrophic success” in light of the fact that fighting continues to this day despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government.

That brought a dismissive response from Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

“President Bush now says his Iraq policy is a catastrophic success. He’s half right. It was catastrophic to rush to war without a plan to win the peace,” Mr. Edwards said.

Inside the hall where Mr. Bush spoke, supporters did a stadium-style wave with large blue and yellow signs cut in the shape of Ws. Kerry supporters stood outside the entrance to the rally site, one holding a sign that said “‘W’orst President” and “Intelligence Failure Begins with the President.”

Mr. Bush spoke in Wheeling as Republican delegates converged on New York City for the convention that will nominate him for a second term. For his campaign stop, he chose an industrial city nestled between two states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, that are election tossups, as is West Virginia.

Before his speech, Mr. Bush met with six workers from the steel industry. He was introduced by Rick Casini, union shop steward at Weirton Steel in Wheeling, who called Mr. Bush “the man who saved steel.”

Mr. Bush imposed tariffs on imported steel for 20 months to give the American industry time to restructure. Some unions and steelworkers say the tariffs should have been left in place longer.

Today, Mr. Bush is back on the campaign trail with stops in Nashua, N.H., and Taylor, Mich.