Bush, Kerry campaigns exchange attacks on security

2.00pm

WASHINGTON - The campaigns of President George W Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry traded charges on national security on Monday as Vice President Dick Cheney questioned Kerry's judgment and faced a wave of Democratic counterattacks.

Bush launched a new television advertisement accusing Kerry of a weak record on defence, and Cheney said the Massachusetts senator had given voters "ample grounds" to doubt his judgment on security issues.

But a host of prominent Democrats and Democratic-supporting groups turned the tables on Cheney, assaulting his own opposition to some Pentagon weapons programmes and his failure to serve in the military.

Bush and Kerry themselves stayed out of the fight, focusing on jobs and internet access during visits to the battleground states of Minnesota, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The election battle between Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, and Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, has focused heavily on defence issues and Iraq as the fighting intensifies there.

The new Bush campaign ad, airing in 18 battleground states and on national cable networks, said Kerry had repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror and called his record on national security "troubling."

In a speech in Fulton, Missouri, Cheney criticised Kerry's votes against some weapons systems, an US$87 billion package to pay for operations in Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War. He said former Iraq President Saddam Hussein would still be in power if Kerry was in charge.

"The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," Cheney said in Fulton, site of Winston Churchill's famous Cold War-era warning about the "Iron Curtain" separating the Communist world from the free world.

But Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe pointed out that Cheney did not serve in the military and once opposed many weapons systems now in use in Iraq.

"He's the last guy who should be lecturing John Kerry about how to defend America and keep the faith with those who wear the uniform," McAuliffe told reporters.

Democrats said Cheney, a former secretary of defence and congressman, had tried to kill or cut numerous weapons programmes being used to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to cut the M-1 tank, B-2 bomber and Apache helicopters.

"The American people have better things to do with their time than listen to more misleading attacks from a man who has been misleading them from the day he took office," McAuliffe said, calling Cheney the "attack dog-in-chief."

A spokesman said Cheney's opposition to the weapons systems cited by McAuliffe came during the post Cold War retrenchment of the US military.

"The decision that Congressman and Secretary of Defence Cheney supported largely had to do with ending programmes that had already produced a large number of important defence systems for the United States," spokesman Kevin Kellems said.

The Democratic focus on Cheney came the day before the Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the papers of Cheney's secret Energy Task Force must be released to the public, with a decision expected by the end of June. On Thursday, Cheney and Bush will testify together in private to the commission investigating the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

On a visit to Minnesota, a state he narrowly lost to Democrat Al Gore in 2000, Bush stayed out of the fray with a call for affordable high-speed internet access, additional hydrogen fuel cell research and electronic medical records.

He wooed internet-savvy voters by urging Congress to make internet access permanently tax free and to reduce regulations so high-speed internet, called broadband, can be universally available by 2007.

"If you want broadband access throughout the society, Congress must ban taxes on access," he said in Minneapolis.

Kerry visited West Virginia and Pennsylvania, two states that have been hit by manufacturing job losses, and said Bush's weak stance on trade with China and other countries was costing Americans.

"When we agree to a trade agreement, the American people deserve to have other nations live up to their side of the bargain," Kerry said as he kicked off a three-day "Jobs First" bus tour of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

- REUTERS