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Obama prepares Clinton 'assault'
17/03/2008 09:05 - (SA)
Washington - Hillary Clinton's White House campaign lashed out on Sunday after a report said rival Barack Obama was preparing a "full assault" on her after unloading some embarrassments to his own campaign.
The feuding over the report in the Democrat's hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, came as Republican nominee-elect John McCain polished his national security credentials on a surprise trip to Iraq.
"It is disappointing that a campaign that began by promising a politics of hope has come to this, that it is signalling and revelling in attacks on Senator Clinton's character," her communications director Howard Wolfson said.
"This is not the campaign they promised us," he said on a conference call.
Ethics and transparency
The Tribune noted that Obama was now distancing himself from his fiery Chicago pastor, who argues in a newly unearthed video that the September 11 attacks of 2001 showed that "America's chickens are coming home to roost".
The Illinois senator had also sat down on Friday for a grilling from Chicago reporters about his past ties to a city property developer, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is on trial for corruption in public contracts.
The Tribune report said Obama was "trying to air his dirty laundry ... as he prepares a full assault on Senator Hillary Clinton over ethics and transparency." It did not spell out what form that assault might take.
But earlier on Sunday, Obama aides kept up a barrage of questioning over Clinton's tax returns, her records from her White House days, and possible ties to donors who gave generously to her husband Bill's presidential library.
"The Clinton campaign says she has been fully vetted but the truth is she is a veteran of non-disclosure," Obama chief strategist David Axelrod said.
"All of this has created a sense that there are things she wants the public not to know," he said.
And addressing the Clinton camp's battle to seat delegates from the pariah states of Florida and Michigan, Axelrod said: "You get the feeling they are literally trying to do anything to win this nomination."
The feistier tone between the campaigns belied a truce over Obama's pastor with Clinton supporters passing up repeating opportunities to decry the inflammatory language of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who said in the newly disclosed video that the 9/11 attacks were brought on by US "terrorism".
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