Cheney leads sharp assault on Kerry at convention

4.00pm

NEW YORK - Vice President Dick Cheney led the Republican convention's most stinging assault on Democrat John Kerry on Wednesday, depicting him as a weak and indecisive leader who was unfit to be commander in chief.

Cheney, one of President Bush's most influential advisers, said the Massachusetts senator who is challenging Bush for the White House had "a habit of indecision" and should not be entrusted with the White House.

"On Iraq, Senator Kerry has disagreed with many of his fellow Democrats, but Senator Kerry's liveliest disagreement is with himself," Cheney said in a speech accepting the party's nomination for a second term as vice president.

"His back and forth reflects a habit of indecision, and sends a message of confusion," he said, citing Kerry's votes to authorise war in Iraq and to support domestic initiatives that he has since criticised.

"Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual -- America sees two John Kerrys."

The prime-time televised showcase for Cheney gave Americans their closest look in years at a key figure in the Bush administration who normally shuns the limelight.

Bush will give his acceptance speech tomorrow, kicking off a two-month race to the Nov. 2 election that polls show is essentially a dead heat. Bush has gained ground on Kerry in recent weeks and taken a slight lead in several surveys.

Cheney, a strong supporter of the Iraq war, said Kerry did not understand that the world had changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and questioned whether Kerry could be trusted to sit in the Oval Office.

"In this time of challenge, America needs -- and America has -- a president we can count on to get it right," Cheney said, praising Bush as "a man who speaks plainly and means what he says."

He said Bush saw a growing threat in Iraq and removed it, and credited Bush's decisive action with convincing Libya to abandon its nuclear program. But, he said, "time and again Senator Kerry has made the wrong call on national security."

In the harshest speech of the convention, keynote speaker Zell Miller, a Democratic senator from Georgia who is backing Bush, said Kerry would be a "dangerous" leader.

"Sen. Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations," said Miller, who 12 years ago delivered a keynote speech at the Democratic convention. "Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide."

LINKS KERRY WITH KENNEDY

Miller, a conservative who earlier this year started a "Democrats for Bush" group, linked Kerry with his fellow senator from Massachusetts, liberal Edward Kennedy. He said that for more than 20 years, "on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure."

Explaining his switch of loyalties, Miller said "today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator."

Democrats decried the sharp tone of the speeches by Cheney and Miller, and noted Cheney had mentioned Kerry by name 14 times but the word "jobs" only twice.

"America deserves better than an attack dog vice president who only tears people down rather than coming up with ideas that will lift middle class families up," the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.

Kerry, interrupting a vacation to make a morning appearance before the nation's largest veterans' group, offered a tough critique of Bush's leadership on the war and what Kerry said was a failure to make any plans for peace in Iraq.

"When it comes to Iraq, it's not that I would have done one thing differently, I would have done everything differently," Kerry said in Nashville, Tennessee, in a speech to the American Legion.

The president's leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has become the centerpiece of his re-election campaign, and Republicans have reminded voters of his war on terror and the campaign in Iraq throughout the convention.

"I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes," Bush told a campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, after recalling the moment when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center and vowed to fight back.

But Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said Bush had failed to prepare for a post-war Iraq or secure the country's borders against outside insurgents. The president's go-it-alone approach had increased the burden on the US military and budget, he said.

Outside the convention hall, about 5,000 people formed a symbolic unemployment line from Wall Street to the Madison Square Garden convention site to highlight the jobs lost under Bush as protests continued on the third day of the convention.

Security inside the hall was breached when AIDS activists briefly interrupted a speech by White House chief of staff Andrew Card to young Republicans, including Bush's twin daughters.

After Bush's campaign appearance in Ohio he headed to New York, where his visit with firefighters and supporters in Queens was briefly beamed into the convention hall before he returned to his hotel to watch Cheney's speech.

- REUTERS