Osama tape stirs more Bush, Kerry attacks

WASHINGTON – US President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry began a frantic sprint to the presidential campaign’s finish yesterday as polls showed the race for the White House remained too close to call.

The candidates will spend the remaining few hours of the campaign visiting states that could decide tomorrow’s election, looking to persuade undecided voters, fire up their supporters and piece together the 270 electoral votes needed for a win. A new element of uncertainty was added to the unpredictable race when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released a new videotape threatening more attacks on Friday.Neither of the rivals directly mentioned the tape on the campaign trail on Saturday, but Bush repeated his vow to capture bin Laden “dead or alive.”Both said they would do the best job of fighting al Qaeda and questioned their opponent’s approach to hunting him down.”The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror,” Bush told supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, repeating his frequent charge that his Democratic challenger is too weak to lead.”Sen.Kerry has chosen the path of weakness and inaction.”Kerry said he and the president were united in their resolve to hunt down bin Laden, but he said in Des Moines, Iowa, that he would wage “a smarter, more effective, tougher, more strategic war on terror.”He also voiced his long-standing criticism that Bush made a mistake by not sending US troops after the al Qaeda leader in 2001 in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.”As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Kerry told a rally in Appleton, Wisconsin.A Reuters/Zogby poll released on Saturday showed Kerry with a statistically insignificant one-point lead on the Republican president nationally, 47-46 per cent, while a new Newsweek poll showed the president expanding his lead over the Massachusetts senator to six points.Both candidates focused on about 10 toss-up states that will decide the election, with Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota getting visits from at least one of the candidates on Saturday.The impact of the bin Laden tape was unclear, with campaign aides suggesting it could either remind voters of Bush’s leadership in the war on terror or of his failure to capture the man blamed for the Sept.11, 2001, attacks.With polls showing Americans trust Bush to lead the fight against terror by a wide margin – the Newsweek poll gave him the edge on the issue by 56-37 per cent – the president renewed his emphasis on the issue.Vice President Dick Cheney, campaigning in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, directly addressed the bin Laden tape and said it was “no ordinary time for America”.- Nampa-ReutersA new element of uncertainty was added to the unpredictable race when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released a new videotape threatening more attacks on Friday.Neither of the rivals directly mentioned the tape on the campaign trail on Saturday, but Bush repeated his vow to capture bin Laden “dead or alive.”Both said they would do the best job of fighting al Qaeda and questioned their opponent’s approach to hunting him down.”The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror,” Bush told supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, repeating his frequent charge that his Democratic challenger is too weak to lead.”Sen.Kerry has chosen the path of weakness and inaction.”Kerry said he and the president were united in their resolve to hunt down bin Laden, but he said in Des Moines, Iowa, that he would wage “a smarter, more effective, tougher, more strategic war on terror.”He also voiced his long-standing criticism that Bush made a mistake by not sending US troops after the al Qaeda leader in 2001 in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan.”As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Kerry told a rally in Appleton, Wisconsin.A Reuters/Zogby poll released on Saturday showed Kerry with a statistically insignificant one-point lead on the Republican president nationally, 47-46 per cent, while a new Newsweek poll showed the president expanding his lead over the Massachusetts senator to six points.Both candidates focused on about 10 toss-up states that will decide the election, with Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota getting visits from at least one of the candidates on Saturday.The impact of the bin Laden tape was unclear, with campaign aides suggesting it could either remind voters of Bush’s leadership in the war on terror or of his failure to capture the man blamed for the Sept.11, 2001, attacks.With polls showing Americans trust Bush to lead the fight against terror by a wide margin – the Newsweek poll gave him the edge on the issue by 56-37 per cent – the president renewed his emphasis on the issue.Vice President Dick Cheney, campaigning in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, directly addressed the bin Laden tape and said it was “no ordinary time for America”.- Nampa-Reuters