Bush: Kerry weak on terrorism

2004-10-22 18:14

Wilkes-Barre - US President George W. Bush wooed voters in this key battleground state on Friday and unleashed a pack of wolves in a menacing new commercial branding Democrat John Kerry as weak on terrorism.

With just 11 days until the November 2 election, Bush overhauled his stump speech to add fresh attacks on the Democrat's approach to terrorism and his positions on taxes, health care, government-run retirement funds and abortion.

Bush seized on a senior Kerry foreign policy adviser's comment that the global war on terrorism declared after the September 11, 2001 strikes was a "just a metaphor."

"I've got news: Anyone who thinks we're fighting a metaphor does not understand the enemy we face, and has no idea how to win the war and keep America secure," he told an estimated at 11 500 people.

The president, here on his 41st visit to Pennsylvania since taking office, was also to campaign in the crucial up-for-grabs states of Ohio and Florida.

At the same time, Bush's campaign released a new ad in which a female narrator accuses Kerry in hushed tones of being dangerously weak on national security, while a pack of wolves prowls menacingly onscreen.

The commercial was inspired by a 1984 advertisement for then-president Ronald Reagan's re-election, which featured a fearsome "bear in the woods" as a stand-in for the Soviet Union, a Bush aide said.

"In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America's intelligence operations by six billion dollars, cuts so deep they would have weakened America's defenses," says the Bush ad.

"And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm," she says.

The Kerry campaign quickly fired back, calling the ad "desperate" and accusing Bush of using "the politics of fear to try and distract from President Bush's failed record on the economy and Iraq."

"It won't work. This only reminds people that it's time for a fresh start and a new direction in America," spokesperson Chad Clanton said.

- AFP